Stage Lights Off

I am a performer. Always have been. Maybe it's the first-born thing going on. Maybe it's the classical ballet training. Maybe it's because I crave being loved and valued.

Truth be told, it's all of it.

As a child, I lived to hear my mom's words of affirmation. I fought hard to get my dad to glance my way. I was a student obsessed with grades, to the point of pulling near all-nighters as a 6th grader. After 3 hours of ballet lessons with a stringent ballet master, I spent another hour in pointe on a tiled kitchen floor, feet blistered and bleeding.

I am a performer. If something can be measured, I will exceed any expectation. Test scores will be perfected and the choreography will be flawless for the performance. But that's just what it is. A performance.

I'm done performing. I've stepped off the stage. It's not authentic. It's not real. It places value only on measurable assessments. It lives for the approval of others - the accolades, the applause, bouquets of roses.

It's taken me a long time to realize that my value does not lie in a trophy, a degree, or in any achieved goal. I'm embarrassed to admit that. My value does not find itself in any success, nor does it lose itself in any failure. It does not lie in my children.

My value comes from being a child of God. He died to set me free. From the stage, the expectations of others, the approving and disapproving alike.

It is by grace that I have been saved.

It is by grace that I have been saved.

It is by grace that I have been saved.

So help me Jesus. To live for One name. To die to everything else.
So help me friends.
So help me family.

If you hear me value the words of others more than the words of my God,

call me out.

If you feel in your heart that something is fake. And I'm just not being real,

call me out.

If you see me investing time and money into costumes that hide insecurities,

call me out.

Sometimes I just can't see beyond the stage lights, but I so desperately want to.

It is by grace that I have been saved.

I still can't comprehend how Jesus has loved me on the stage and off. How His love has been my constant, always a constant; never swayed by any ridiculous direction I've turned. I so love that about Him.

He values me, because I am His. And that's all that ever mattered anyway.