I grew up in the church, but the God of my childhood and adolescence was not the God of the gospel.

This God was a strict, angry God who could show mercy one day and rain down wrath the next. I would never be “good enough” but would try very hard to prove my worth. The Bible told me that God loved me, but I never quite believed it. I was unlovable and always disappointing. My daily failures to measure up to a certain standard I had imagined up in my head proved this to be true.

My parents are first generation immigrants who love the Lord. They are hard workers and tried their best to give us the life they never had. This life was heavily based on works. I believe it was difficult for them to separate their deeply-embedded world view from their understanding of the gospel. Good works became intertwined with earthly rewards and right standing before a holy God. These were the kinds of implied formulas that were planted in our hearts.

I don’t fault anyone for my skewed understanding of God in my youth.  It was only a matter of time.

Growing up as a major rule-follower, I mostly considered myself a “good girl.” But I had so many idols. My achievements were one. My pursuit of approval within my family and love and acceptance outside my family were also significant ones. I caught attention from boys, who I’d become good at deceiving into believing that I was, in fact, lovable. The older I became, the more my self-worth and value became dependent on what I was able to achieve and whose approval I was able to win.  As I collected these virtual trophies, I continued to identify as a Christian, but the cross was not sweet to me.

I believed Jesus to be my savior but failed to crown him as my King.

I continued living my life obeying the rules without dealing with the more fundamental questions of “whose am I?;” “to whom do I give my first love and loyalty?”

I didn’t fully grasp the power and full significance of the cross until I became a young adult. Comprehending the significance of the imputed righteousness of Christ blew my mind, and all my “good works” were finally visible as the filthy rags they were, with crystal clear clarity. For the first time in my life, I saw myself as a white-washed tomb: clean and sparkly on the outside, filthy and rotting on the inside.

These truths I now understand and cherish: I did not and cannot do anything to deserve God’s love or my salvation. Everything is from God alone, because of his mercy and grace.  I was lost but now am found.

I still struggle with seeing myself with the value God sees in me, and divorcing that value from what I have in my hands to offer him. I feel ever unloveable at times and the enemy is quick to cause me to question the logistics of God’s love for me. But he continues to humble me every day, more recently by limiting my abilities to “do” and “earn” even further than ever before.  He is stripping me of things on the outside that I once treated as the measure of my value: the use of my education; the ability to work and earn a living; my mobility which enables me to serve others and do things for myself; my appearance (hair).

Truly, this do-er of a girl now is left with empty, barren hands.

Nothing in my hands to bring; simply to the cross I cling.