I think I have tried to prove myself my entire life. 

As a little girl, scrawny with short white blonde hair that was somehow always in my face, I always tried to play with the boys. I hated the color pink with a passion, in all honesty, I was indifferent to the color but felt that if anyone knew I liked pink, I would be thoroughly embarrassed and my street creds would be threatened. In recess or camping trips with other families, all I wanted was to prove myself and show that I was strong enough to play with the older boys. I would scrape up my knees and lose my breath trying to keep up with them. When they would say I couldn’t play with them, I would take it as a deep and personal offense. It meant I simply wasn’t good enough, not rough enough to play with them. I would grudgingly walk back to girls table with tears in my eyes and bitterness in my heart as the other girls looked at me with confusion because I didn’t own my own American Girl Doll. 

Fast forward to middle school. Middle school Elina was still very much a tomboy with short hair and boy clothes. I was stilling in study hall doing some homework sitting across from a boy that held a lot of popularity at the time. I remember him asking everyone at the table for help with his math homework and I responded with the help I could extend to him. He looked at me in confusion when I tried to help him, asking me how I knew all this. He was absolutely astonished when I told him that I was in the math fast track and was technically a year ahead of him in math. He laughed and continued to make a huge deal about how he was so surprised. Hurt, I asked him why he was surprised by that. He responded with a, “Well, you know, you’re just Elina, you’re a girl plus your blonde”. That day I sobbed in the bathroom for two hours, not even being dramatic. I put my entire identity into proving myself to others and a middle school boy just shattered that into a million pieces with a few dumb words. God bless that boy and God knows he had no idea how fragile my identity was. 

Skip ahead a few years to high school Elina. I ended up growing out of my tom boy phase and actually looked like a girl now, I actually cared way too much about what I looked like but I still held on to that weight of proving myself to everybody. I took honors engineering all of high school and every year I was one of maybe two or three girls in a packed class of 30 or 40 people. Every year, engineering brought the same challenges. Our teacher would prompt us to chose partners and I would look around as all the guys avoided eye contact as much as possible, because having a girl being your partner must mean a bad grade. Predictably, the other two girls and I would look at each other and become a group. If by the off chance that I did get partnered with a guy, they always felt this need to tell me exactly what to do and use smaller words to dumb it down for me. None of them would take me seriously or listen to any of my input, sometimes they would call me cute but never smart. I would get flustered and upset. I knew that if I were to be taken seriously I had to be the best, not just good but the best. I would work my butt off desperately trying to prove myself. I had to have the best, smartest, and most efficient project to merely be listened to so if I didn’t achieve that I was simply worthless. 

Again, I was grasping at perfection trying to prove myself worthy. 

Then, I met Jesus. 

...

Here at the Guatemala base, we do something called activation on Thursdays. This is when the staff gives us a teaching in the morning and then we go out and put it into practice in the afternoon. Our first activation was given by a woman named Kelsey who talked about identity. The mere way she talked about identity and how our identity is divinely woven with Jesus, changed my life. 

I had understood that in Jesus, our lives are new, our identities are new. That when we say yes to Jesus, the chains of sin and brokenness are broken off and we are then bonded in divine relationship with Jesus, instead of our sin, creating the most beautiful freedom. 

It wasn’t until recently that I truly tasted that freedom. 

Residue of my striving to prove myself had shown up all throughout my life and even on the race and I was getting sick of it. Sick of the exhaustion of living for an imaginary finish line of perfection. I had found bitterness manifest in my heart when others succeeded above me because that must have meant that I was in turn, failing. I knew that these feelings were not a reflection of the Father’s heart so I decided that I was going to fix it, ironic how I was still trying to prove to myself that I could stop proving myself. I decided to sit down with the Father and write down everything that defined me and my identity, every good thing that I am, I would write on this piece of paper, so that when I felt the need to prove myself I could remember who I am so I don’t need to prove myself. Man, what God told me instead was the best thing I could have heard. 

I sat down, paper and pen in hand, ready to write small and make a grand list. But as soon as I asked the Lord who I was, he answered simply, 

“A human madly in love with Jesus”.

Those words took up a fraction of the blank page but the entirety of my soul. 

PRAISE GOD THAT IF THE ONLY THING I AM IS A HUMAN IN LOVE WITH JESUS, I DID A DAMN GOOD JOB.

Psalm 16:2 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, it reads, “I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord, apart from you I have no good thing”. 

The Psalm is so beautifully humbling. I have learned that one of the best things to be is a person that has no good thing other than the Lord. It is freedom, true, raw and utter freedom. There is no more striving to obtain the approval of others. There is no more proving myself to be called worthy. There is no more shame when we fall short of the glory of God. Instead, there is simply freedom.

Because here’s the truth:

I am really bad at sports.

I am really bad at doing math.

I not super strong, years at the gym didn’t fix my chicken arms. 

I am not good at staying still.

I can’t swim.

I run really weird. 

I am perfectly imperfect. 

Walking with Jesus has taught me not how to cover up my imperfections but to use them to glorify God. 

There is so much freedom in knowing the worth that we have in Jesus, not the worth we obtain from our works, because that is inevitably fail. 

WE ARE WORTHY OF THE BLOOD OF CHRIST! Think about that! We are literally WORTH the pain and suffering of our perfect, holy and gracious God! Why on earth would I go running around trying to tell everyone I am worthy through good grades in engineering and the ability to throw a football when the CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE ALREADY CALLS ME WORTHY. 

Man, this seriously changed my life. The freedom of Jesus has given me the ability to walk in humility, grace, love, understanding and passion. It has taught me how to maintain joy in every single circumstance, it has taught me how to dance like a fool and not care and it has taught me more about the Father’s deeply loving heart. 

Thank you God, for seeing the little tom boy girl who wore cargo shorts and cut her hair short, and called her worthy and already set her free.