With the help and encouragement of some good friends of mine, I have decided to start this new project called the Worthy Project.
What is the Worthy Project you ask? the Worthy Project is a celebration of people embracing the identity spoken over them by God: beloved, valued, worthy. As artwork is valued by an artist’s signature, so are we valued by the signature of our Creator. God has signed us with his name by creating us in his image. We are worthy and valued because he says we are.
So through a combination of photography and written stories, I want to attempt to creatively convey some of the incredible ways God is working in people’s lives.
Here is the first installment called “a Field of Wildflowers“ written by the beautiful, marvelously talented Hailey Tucker:
After my husband left me, I was shattered. Not because I was so in love and couldn’t imagine my life without him, but because I had made him and our marriage everything in my life. I had lost myself, if I had ever known who that truly was. I was left to an empty home that was decorated in things that he loved, I was in the middle of nursing school at the college he wanted to attend. I was friendless because we spent every waking moment together. I worked at the same hospital as him, I had nothing that was just my own.
My childhood friend came to stay with me in those first months. Not someone from Topeka, but a friend from Highland…California that is. Yeah, this amazing person who loves the Lord and loves me, dropped everything in her life to move in with me for a month in another state. Abby, I’m blessed to know someone like you, who above all else is obedient to the Lord. For I know that he was like “hey your friend needs you because she needs to see me” and you were like “Hey sounds great dude!”
The month she stayed with me, she asked questions like, What is something that brings you joy? What are some things you want to try? What do you want your future to look like, regardless of Anthony? We spent our days cooking new things, doing yoga, listening to some Jesus podcasts and exploring my quaint city. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was helping me discover me. She would ask me questions about Anthony, about what had happened. She was helping me to verbally process my emotions in ways that I didn’t know how to do on my own.
In the midst of the month she was with me, we decided to take an impromptu trip to Memphis where she had friends. This trip was really a foreshadowing of so much to come in my life. It was here that I was introduced to community living and house church. That weekend I learned about the World Race, an eleven month international mission trip to eleven different countries that I would go on 4 years later. It was my first trip on my own, as a single lady, traveling around with friends and doing what I wanted. And it was here that I first learned about the enneagram, which simply helped me to begin to see and accept myself for where I was and who I was.
After being left by my husband, I was filled with doubt. All I could think was that he didn’t want to be with me so why would anyone else? I looked at the girls that he did want to spend time with and found myself in the vicious cycle of comparing myself to others which really just lead to everything I saw wrong in myself. There were many things that he said that I carried with me for a long time, if I’m honest things I still carry with me. But when I first heard about the Nine on the enneagram, it was the first time in a long time that I looked at these traits, things that he didn’t like in me, and saw them as desirable again. There was so much comfort in being a peaceful person, in being gentle, in being passive but in a self-assured way.
The night we left Memphis we attended my new friend’s house church and her community prayed prophetically over Abby and I. God said to me, you are like a field of wildflowers. You are a peaceful place that people can come to rest and find comfort in. And you have a quiet acceptance that is ANYTHING but passive.
Woah! Jesus spoke right to my heart in a time that I desperately needed to see who I was again. He said hey you aren’t a loud, life of the party person and that’s ok. And even as I sit writing this almost 4 years later, I don’t believe that anymore. I needed the comfort of being a quiet person, but in accepting that part of who I am blossomed a strength of character I hadn’t realized I was lacking. I feel like I have become the person I wanted to be, for me, it came from giving up that image of myself.
It’s crazy to look back at that girl now, I fear of ever becoming her again. Of truly believing with all my heart that my value came from a man. Not from having a man, but that man himself. All that mattered to me was that HE wanted me and when he didn’t anymore it was like I had failed myself.
Ladies, let me tell you right now. Your value comes from the Lord. His word will never return void, and what does he say about us? We are his masterpiece, fearfully and wonderfully made in His image. Even if no one else in the history of the world would have a chance at redemption, just you, Jesus would still go to the cross because you are worth it to Him. THAT is where your worth comes from. Nothing on this earth can take that away from you. Know that you are truly a reflection of the Lord, made in His image. You are strong, worthy, and valuable for who you are as a woman.
