Worth...Rest

So, I've been thinking about worth lately. I think it's something I've been fighting (both against society and against myself) since my wretched preteen years. There are so many times that I have felt confronted with the fact that I need to prove myself by what I can do or how I can perform. In Mexico, it has turned to a need to prove how smart I am. Even amongst the foreignors I feel that we have this need to prove to others that we understand the story for literature class or that we can speak better Spanish than the next person. It's easy to pride myself on this philosophy when I am the best speaker in the group, but it is also incredibly humbling (and sometimes I just feel really stupid) when I don't understand a story that everybody else does. Frankly, I'm tired. I've never wanted to participate in this way of assigning worth but I feel like my sinful nature reverts to it so often. Lately it's played out in the fact that I don't feel like I can study as well as people from other countries. I am finding out how different study habits and educational systems are from all over the world. I want to learn, but sometimes I feel so inferior to some people who can sit down for 4 hours and soak up the information in front of them.

Donald Miller has some great thoughts on this whole system of trying to prove and assign our worth in his book Searching For God Knows What. He basically says that we have a "lifeboat mentality" in which we are all in this lifeboat and want to prove that we shouldn't be thrown out. We do that by performing (in my case struggling to find worth in how I perform in Spanish and desiring to perform better in school and be more educated in general). The reality is that this philosophy is empty of assigning any real worth. To me, that is obvious because I never rest when I am in this mentality. But, oh to rest. To rest in being a child of God. To rest in knowing that I have been unworthily given a "love that will not let me go." That is the challenge. To fight my nature that wants my worth to be about me and find my worth in the love of God. I have a feeling this may be a lifelong fight, but I have hope of rest.