{sitting at a coffee shop in Boca Chica, DR with the beach in front of me and the rain surrounding me.}
Self-worth and purpose in life is always a struggle.
For some it’s engrained in us at a young age from family or environment.
Maybe it’s from a significant other that has treated you terribly, affecting relationships after,
Or maybe Satan just continues to lie to you each day.
Either way, we ALL deal with this.
Today, yesterday, or tomorrow, we will feel the lies creep in.
We hear it through comparison, human interaction, or loneliness.
We all feel like garbage… at some point. In some form or fashion, we feel this.
Guess what?
You Aren’t Trash.
YOU. AREN’T. TRASH.
I want to tell you about a friend that I met this month.
She works at the ministry that I was able to serve through in the Dominican Republic. She has worked for H.O.P.E 4 the DR for a year now.
She is joyful, full of life, a mother of 3, and goofy.
You meet her, you like her.
For this blog, we will call her Candy*.
My team and I visited Candy’s house one morning because she had been absent from work from sickness. After breakfast we started walking to see our new friend and a familiar face to encourage and pray over her. I walked into Candy’s house feeling like we were her answered prayers to her sickness and bad health.
Yes, I was Jesus in human form coming to heal you Candy, get ready.
{you can laugh…}
So we call from the gate and ask if we can come in.
She accepts, we give hugs all around and find a seat in her living room.
Food is boiling on the stove and we are playing with the family’s new puppy.
As we talk through Tony, our translator, we ask about her health and if she is getting better.
She says ‘yes, but can we wait to pray over her until her brother is done taking a shower’
With the time we are given before praying over her health, we start to ask questions about her life and family.
Candy’s Life:
Candy was raised by a family that wasn’t of any relation. She was told about her adoptive family at age 15, after she was already married and a mother of 1. Her parents loved her, and encouraged her to find the family she had never known. It’s taken Candy couple of years to make the full circle, but she is one of ten kids from her mother. All children have different father’s, but have made contact with each other. Her siblings have great relationships now, and they are still waiting to meet a sister that lives in the USA.
#1 how would feel after finding out this news
#2 how would feel towards a mother who gave you up
Candy’s mother has only raised her youngest three children, giving the previous 8 up in different ways. So how did Candy’s mother give her up?
She was left in a trash can….
She was left for dead.
She was left in a freakin’ trash can.
Candy continued to walk us through her story and how the Lord has placed peace and forgiveness in her heart. She has chosen to forgive her mother, and make sure her kids always know how much she loves them EVERY SINGLE DAY.
She has chosen to believe that she is worth this life, and she has purpose.
She has casted out the lies that could very much control her daily living.
reminder: she was left in a trash can.
Was Candy able to forgive her mother walking life alone?
No.
The Lord is renewing her everyday that her identity isn’t in what her family or this world calls her, it’s in what the Lord says she is.
1 Samuel 16:7
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Psalm 139:13-14
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well
Psalm 62:5-6
Only God gives inward peace, and I depend on him. God alone is the mighty rock that keeps me safe, and he is the fortress where I feel secure.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.
John 14:13-21 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever- the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
What lies are you allowing Satan to tell you about yourself?
Join me and ask the Lord to speak truth into what you REALLY are.
You aren’t trash.
You are worth it.
You are beautiful and whole and the Lord wants to love you as you are.
You are worth it.
You aren’t trash.
So… Don’t treat yourself like it.
From random Dominican Wifi,
Anna
*I didn’t use Candy’s real name to protect her story*
