Proving Myself
By: Carole L. Haines

Baths are always a great way for me to listen to my own heart and listen to God’s. I’m relaxed under the warm and steamy water, just listening, yielded and still. This morning, like many mornings recently, my heart was running to what kind of fruit my life has born. Pretty deep thoughts for 6 a.m. in the morning. God was speaking to my heart about the fact that I have been trying to prove myself my entire life.  What does that even mean, proving myself? Proving what, and to whom? I let the thoughts run their course, conversing with the Lord in silence. No one else would even know anything was going on. But my mind was firing on all cylinders as I listened. to both God and myself, bantering back and forth about this odd subject. And yet, how odd is it really?  How many of us are trying to prove we have worth and value in our lives? Maybe it’s not as obscure a struggle as I originally thought.
The conversation continued in my heart as I dried off and wandered out to my usual chair, in my usual corner to have an actual time alone with God. Glancing next to me I am reminded of the high school pictures that my husband found while cleaning the basement yesterday. I was so young, so naïve, so full of dreams and ideas.  I used to grieve when I would think back to my dreams of all I thought that I would do and be.  But I realize now that those dreams were my thoughts for myself, my plans, my determinations. But God had a different plan for me, though it would take me years of trying to realize my own plans, and failing, to understand this. So many closed doors and seeming rejections. So many disappointments and tears along the way. Disillusionment, anger, shaking my fists at the heavens. Only to end up right back here, alone, with my God, some 30 years later. I wonder how many others have felt as I do? How many countless millions have felt their lives have ebbed away and not accomplished much? Do framed degrees and awards on the wall actually mean someone’s life has value? It can? But not having them is no indication of a life devoid of purpose.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
⁹ “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)

 We really have no way to measure the worth of our own lives. This is left alone, with Our Precious Lord. I yield to His understanding and not my own, His plan, not my dreams, His purpose, not my wants. I find my comfort in His Word, especially in the verse I will close with.

Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. ³ For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. (Col.3:1-4)