Portable worth
Your worth isn't solely in what you presently are
Our worth rests in us, not the present version of us. Get this wrong, and we can stall or, even worse, live far beneath our potential.
We get attached to who we are right now. Emotional attachment to who we are now isn’t something to negatively judge ourselves or others for; it’s something that has guarded us against rash, dishonorable, or inauthentic change. It has partly protected us against change, guided by momentarily favorable winds or opportunity. These are real risks to be avoided. But the emotional attachment can be shed after it has served its limited role in our diligent searching for the next step toward Godly character. Once we see, yes, this is what’s next for me, the attachment has done a service.
As we accept and perhaps even invite change, a lack of worth can create a hurdle to the better version that awaits. Our worth can be wholly founded upon the acceptance our present version has enjoyed, which can hijack our journey to what awaits. But worth isn’t conditional; it’s always with us, portable into what’s next. Even if we’re not clear on what that looks like. Or even if we can’t sell previous ‘buyers’ on what we’re becoming.
Once someone or many someones like what we are, protection of our acceptance can keep us there. Our built-in desire for admiration and delivering on expectations becomes a limiting feature. Differentiating between a healthy acceptance of our traveling self and our present self can be valuable to develop. Our ever-evolving selves can sometimes mean leaving what’s been successful. We are exiting the comfort of known acceptance. It’s the crisis bands face in sophomore albums. What’s the axiom? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But that notion is founded on remaining, retaining, and staying the same. An impossibility to be sure. Not changing isn’t ours to enjoy.
A once and continual story
The story of Christ willingly dying, being in the tomb, and leaving it behind holds truth on several levels. First, while it is the supreme story of the Christian faith and the ultimate one-time sacrifice for the soul, it also mirrors a repeatable pattern for our growth. It represents an experience arc in our development and our becoming. Our dying and resurrection to newness, ‘nextness,’ what awaits us, is shown in Christ’s descent into darkness, waiting, and then stepping into a new dawn.
The story is a pattern as much as a single moment on our soul’s ultimate behalf. Even the tiny detail of grave clothes being shed, like an exoskeleton from an earlier shape, is a symbol of our journey. Christ’s death and resurrection is the perennial example of our shedding of old layers. Nature itself joins this shedding and becoming. Spring is our soul’s next step after the darkness we endure.
Immutable and portable worth
Worth is portable; we carry it through our evolution. We must believe this to become who we are becoming. If we think our worth is tied to our present self, if we feel acceptance only as we are right now, we will almost certainly be less willing to release the current version of ourselves for the next better version of our growth.
Jesus tells his dear friend, Mary, "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended. to the Father”. Our message to those we love can honor their attachment to who we have been while being firm about the unhelpful delay their attachment represents. It’s a message we can give ourselves as much as others. So don’t cling to your ego, vocation, possessions, or all you’ve come to be known as; return to the Father, and the new way will be revealed. Exit the former and leave behind the thoughtfully chosen clothes other’s dressed your previous self in.
The service of an unknown tomb
We have tombs for unknown people, but there are only a few unknown tombs. The location of the most famous tombs are precisely known: Pharaoh, Ulysses S. Grant, and Elvis. But, the tomb of Christ is only guessed at. And that’s a gift to our need to release what we’ve come from. A tomb is a place of release and relinquishing, notable but not ultimate. It is both a finish line and starting point. Helpful to recall but not a place to continue to mourn beside.
Happy resurrection, Feral Souls.