From Bad Math to True Worth

So, I about lost my mind this week, and that was just from doing math. I homeschool my kids and this week, math had me at my wit’s end. Not calculous or trigonometry. Simple sums. And while I love math and I love my son, but there are days that the combination is highly flammable and everything goes grease-fire and math gets bad.

I have noticed this so often in my own life too. There are some days I get this bad math stuck in my mind and things can go downhill so quickly. And the thing is, this bad math isn’t just the root of our moodiness, or our discouragement, it can actually sabotage our efforts to know and love and follow Jesus Christ. Everything’s related.

Here’s what I mean:

Types of bad math:

My child’s behavior +

The Pinterest-worthy status of my home +

How successful my husband is +

My number of FB friends (or how many people liked the last thing I posted) +

My weight +

Our income =

My worth as a woman.

Clearly, this is bad math. Toxic math. But then, what is our worth? And who gets to decide it?  What exactly is the equation that helps us determine our worth as women?

Proverbs 31:10 says, An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels.

An “excellent” wife is worth a lot. How do we achieve that? What is “excellent”?

In some ways, I feel like that is the lifelong journey of every woman–to discover the answer to this question. To discover the equation, the sums, that will add up to measure her worth, to deem her worthy.

Now, we live in a world that’s constantly offering us equations.  And so we end up making mental evaluations like that all the time. We live in a world that thrives on that sort of evaluation, right?

Basically every single person on the planet with a pulse has a FB account now. You know how Facebook was created, right? It began as a computer program in Oct. 2003, which “used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine college houses, placing two photos of females next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the ‘hotter.‘”

The entire premise of the site, was to evaluate and RATE the beauty of assorted college girls.

To vote on their worth.

No wonder FB can make me feel so worthless.

Because even though it has changed and grown, the root of it is still the same–I’m going to put myself out there for the world, and they will vote on my worth. However many friends, however many likes, however many shares, however many people notice me or love me or laugh at me or approve of me–there’s my worth.

It’s toxic. Now, I get it, we have to live in this world, right? I have a FB account too–I’m not trying to demonize social media, but we must be WISE and understand we live in a world that is not our friend. We are surrounded by CONSTANT evaluation seeking to tell us our worth. But you know what?

But they all use bad math.

They ALL use bad math.

They all use some variation of the equation I mentioned earlier: My looks, children’s behavior, income, husband’s success, we add it all up to be the sum total of our worth. 

And it’s toxic, debilitating, soul-killing math.

All these equations can be reduced down to this: Performance = Worth

Such Bad Math. So what is our true worth? How do we figure it?

It goes like this:

Created by God +

Chosen by God +

Loved by God =

Infinite worth

An excellent wife is one who knows who she is and whose she is. She isn’t wasting time working out ridiculous sums that shrink her soul down to a figure. She’s busy about worthwhile work because she knows she’s already loved.

She’s working from her identity not for her identity. 

This is also why we fight for the rights of unborn children, because they have worth even before they achieve anything. Before we know what they look like, how smart they’ll be, or what their earning-potential will be, we esteem them as having infinite worth because they were created, chosen, and loved by God.

Just like you. 

No matter where you are on performance hamster-wheel, whether you’ve already stepped off it or are still sweating and struggling on it, may you have a fresh revelation today of your infinite worth simply because you are created, chosen, and loved by God. 

{Have a blessed weekend, beloved ones! Thanks for reading.}