Brea’s Story

What is the worth of a human life? According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, worth is defined as, “importance, value, merit”. Although I grew up in a loving supportive Christian family, before I personally received Christ into my life I believed the lies the world was feeding me when it came to my worth. The world tells us that our worth lies in our success, our beauty, and how smart we are.

I first accepted Christ into my life as a ten year old, when Christ was just beginning to change my life, I was insecure and uncomfortable in who I was. I was constantly bombarded by the lies of the world telling me that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t perfect enough, and not just physically but also in every other aspect of my life. In the middle of my sixth grade year my family moved to a completely new community, planting my insecure self into an entire new world with no friends and a changing body. By seventh grade my life became all about my grades and my appearance. My worth had become defined by how well I could perfect these aspects of my life. I could be daily seen trudging to and from class with my head down, shoulders slouched, and eyes averted to anyone their path crossed, the reflection of the condition of my heart as I slowly realized my inability to be perfect.

In the middle of the third quarter of my seventh grade year I got a math quiz back with a score of 9 out of 10 destroying my perfect 100 percent and downgrading it to a 99.9 percent. Devastated I went home and cried, the next day I went to the teacher and begged for extra credit. Although now looking back, this memory is rendered as funny, it goes to show how deep my worth had become embedded in my grades. By this point my hair had also started to curl making my perfectly slicked back, bump free ponytail an impossibility. In that moment of my vulnerability, God began speaking to my heart, planting the first seeds of my realization of my worth in him.

Slowly, I began to change, by God’s power alone. The more I grew closer to God the faster I was transformed. Although I struggled along the way, at one point almost becoming bulimic, God was always there to grab my hand while I was drowning in a flood of self-worthlessness. When ever I had hit rock bottom, God always provided a verse, a song, or a person in my life to remind me of how much he loved and valued me. By God sending his one and only son to die in place of us, so that we may spend eternity with him, God gave us worth equal to that of his own son making us co-heirs to Christ Jesus! John 1:12 “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-.” The amazing thing is we cannot do anything positive or negative to change this. No matter who you are or what you’ve done you have amazing worth as a person, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8, we just have to accept his amazing gift. With God constantly reminding me of this my self-confidence and self-worth grew each day.

By the time I was done with my eighth grade year, I was a completely new person, confident in not myself but confident in who I was in Christ. Today, many people tell me that I am one of the most confident people they know, but little do they know this was not always the case. Thanks to God’s amazing love, I am today a person totally changed by the one who all along knew my worth as his precious child. I am entirely and totally devoted to the one who loves me for all of my imperfections and flaws, the one who taught me the value and worth of a single human life.