Self Worth

As we go through life and try to establish a sense of self, we look for things that make us feel good about ourselves. We look for praise from others to make us feel worthwhile and important. Often we look to certain events, experiences, or people to give us purpose and worth. The problem with this way of obtaining self worth from the outside is that it is very easy to have self worth destroyed and ripped away.  

While growing up, my greatest desire was to one day be a mom. I babysat many, many children, even taking care of triplets from the time they were two months old until they were nearly two years old. I also spent a great deal of time with my nieces and nephews. I couldn’t wait for the day that I would be a mom and felt that being a mom would give me a great amount of purpose and worth.

I got pregnant within the first week of getting married. I was thrilled! We were both so excited to become parents! I can’t remember if it was the day we brought our beautiful daughter home or the second day, but my husband said to me, “We need to have my mom come over and show you how to take care of a baby and be a mom.” I just looked at him for a while then let him know I didn’t think that would be necessary. I felt I had enough experience to get us started. He greatly disagreed. He informed me that since I was the second to last child in my family that I knew nothing about raising children. He was the oldest and practically raised his siblings so he knew better than me. I quietly refused having his mom “show me how to be a mom” and tried to stumble my way through the next few weeks.

The confidence I once had with children was quickly stripped away. I was told regularly that I wasn’t doing things right or, “that’s not how my mom does it.” So many things that I had wanted to do with my children faded away as I shifted to the mode of trying to please my husband to keep him from becoming angry. All those years of planning and imagining how it would feel to be a mother left me feeling worthless, lost, and terribly disappointed, both in my husband but most especially in myself. I should have been strong enough! I should be able to create a home and environment that I felt was healthy! I should… I should… I should... So many “I should’s.”

All my childhood I had placed my worth as a woman on being a wife and a mother. But being a wife and a mother was not rewarding like I thought it would be. I was not happy. I was not satisfied. I was weak. I was depressed. I was worthless. My home was full of contention, tears, and pain. It wasn’t the safe harbor I had always imagined it would be. I felt I was a failure.

The years of self discovery in my older teen years became a distant memory as I thought my sole purpose was now to please my husband and get through each day alive and with the same number of children that I started out with.

I remember a time after our second child was over a year old. I was feeling like I needed to do something for myself because the Amy I once knew had become so distant. When I was younger I loved doing Karate. I felt that if I could get in a Karate class that it would help me to become healthier and give me some of that self worth that I had lost. I proposed the idea to my husband who began making fun of me for wanting to do Karate then spent the next  hour lecturing me on how that would be a bad idea. Who would watch the kids? Where would we find the money? How would this impact him? He never told me “no,” he just told me how wrong and selfish it was for me to want to do this and left it up to me to make the final decision. Of course I never signed up for a Karate class.

A short time later, while looking for a way to get healthy and exercise, I saw an ad for a belly dancing class offered in the community. I jokingly said I should do it and he immediately encouraged me to, offering to watch the kids, saying we could take money out of savings since we didn’t have extra in our monthly budget. I was a little surprised by the difference in this response until I realized that me belly dancing would bring him pleasure. When something seemed to benefit him, he was okay with it. When he saw no benefit to him, he didn’t want me to do it. This experience only validated all the other attacks on who I was and what my purpose was. At that point I felt that my only purpose in being a woman was to please my husband. There was no other value to me at that time.

By the time I realized that the only way for me to continue to live on this earth was to leave the marriage, I had no sense of worth. I had been told for a long time that our marriage problems were my fault, that our children’s behavior problems were my fault, that I was living in a fantasy world because I couldn’t prove to my husband’s satisfaction that he had any responsibility in our family’s issues. I had become so lost through this experience that I had no idea who or what I was.

Since leaving over three years ago, I have often wondered, where does self worth come from? How to I come to see the good in myself? How do I recognize the divinity within me that comes from being a daughter of God? How do I find and be true to myself? And how do I do all these things without being selfish or self-centered?

The Bible says that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourself. So that says I have to love myself. That can be a very challenging thing to do.

So who do I look to in order to know how to do that? I believe the Bible answers that. We have a perfect example in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught to love, not condemn. This doesn’t just apply to how we feel about others, but how we feel about ourselves. He taught to be kind, always. He taught to take time for yourself like he did when he retreated to the mountains. He taught that sin does not define the person. We can always change, grow, and become better.

I believe very strongly in personal evaluations. I like change and growth. If I am the same today as I was yesterday then I am doing something wrong. The goal is to one day reach perfection so that I don’t have to be constantly changing, but I am a long way from reaching that point. I believe that in following the teachings of Christ, it will lead me to find out who I truly am and help me establish a strong sense of worth.

I feel that the more I get to know myself, that my self worth can grow from the inside out. It is that true self worth that will withstand the storms of life and bring me strength of character to keep me going no matter what I am told from others. I can feel that growing inside right now. It also helps to know that the only being I need to please is God. In doing all I can to please Him, I feel myself growing and becoming. And what a joy it is to be in a position where I have the freedom to become all that I desire and God desires me to be!

What have you discovered about yourself today?