What's valuable. What's worth it?

"It's not worth it". Her fingers held tightly to the plastic water bottle and her right knee bounced nervously as she glanced from me to the other faces around the table then back down at the bottle. It was as if she was gaining energy from that bottle, the label peeled off many minutes ago and the water emptied many minutes before that. You could see tears on the edge of her lower eyelids, ready to spill over any second. She swallowed and then glanced up at me one more time.

I met her eyes and asked "What would be worth it?"

Her answer was quick. "Nothing. Ever. I'm not going through this again."

I've been in this situation all too many times.

While she was referring to theft, the subject of our conversation could be anything - anything we compromise ourselves in doing, in being, in living the life we own.

In what do we find worth it? What is valuable? What are we willing to compromise. And for what? A fleeting moment of pleasure? That rush of excitement and thrill to break us out of our boredom? To embrace a moment of feeling alive?

Have we become robots? Have we become zombies? (Gah, I detest the term... those darn movies have annoyed me).

It's as if we walk around doing what we feel we should do instead of what we want to do? Are we caught in some assembly-line life because we're obligated to it? What if we broke out of that dead-man-walking line and escaped to the zig-zag pathway of less walked terrain and truly experienced something different?

Who are the Jones' and why do we have to keep up with them? Why does culture define the age we make choices and the path those choices are supposed to take us? I've read "dare to be different" so many times, nodded my head in agreement, stomped my foot in affirmation and then received a reprimand for following through on that dare.

Why aren't we living? Why are we numbing ourselves and then complaining about the lack of feeling?

We need to find our worth. We need to find our value -- in who we are. Not in our circumstances. Not in events. Not in people. In us. We need to find it in ourselves - in who we were made to be. Not in our job title or resume descriptions. In who you are. In the child of God that you were created as. In the fact that God loved you FIRST. In who He made you to be. You. Who YOU are...

Find life in yourself.

And live it.