Irreplaceable?

My heart was heavy yesterday.  I swear if you could take it out of my chest, place it on a scale, the reading would come in at more than twenty pounds.  The weight pulled my shoulders in just a little.  Chin to chest. Mind too busy for its own good.

All because of a phone call.

I work with vulnerable youth.  There are many different hats and roles this encompasses, but one that pulls on my heart strings like nobody’s business. Encounters with these young girls that I swear leaves me feeling like Jesus is sitting there right beside us, leaning in, listening, weeping.

The stories within the four walls that are shared grips my heart and crumbles it.  Powdered dust squeezed between fingers. Leaving me feeling empty and so very internally silent.  And that’s just me; the listener.

Stories if I told you, you wouldn’t fathom.  Words too ugly and too hard for ears to hear.  Stories of young girls doing more than grown up things because no one taught them they were beautiful just because.  Because somewhere down the road, or all along it, someone taught them they were replaceable.  And slowly, somewhere between Chutes and Ladders and Saturday morning cartoons, they grew to believe it. And undoing this notion, this I’m replaceable feeling, which sinks into the pours of their skin and their sinews, is like trying to scale a mountain.

I wonder who taught them, at what moment, that they were replaceable.  And what about you?  You see we don’t need a tragic history to feel that way too.  Our mundane drives to work.  Our messy living room floors.  Our ho-hum moments in marriage.  The wrinkles setting in at the crooks of our eyes.  Our children struggling.  Ourselves struggling. 

It’s too easy isn’t it? To slip into believing it.  That we are exchangeable, not so important, lesser than our all-together neighbour. And we act out of that place, when we believe it, facing the world like a worn down fighter, frown so heavy our face begins to drop.

Today, with all your mess and all your history. Good and bad.  Ups and downs.  My prayer for you is that God in a palpable way shows you that you are his irreplaceable daughter.  Whether you are immobile because of a health issue.  At a job you are growing to detest.  Or at home, with your babes and your mess. That you would feel and know how totally and utterly irreplaceable you are to Him and this world.  That he has given you a unique place.  A perfect place exactly where you are.  To fulfill your divine purpose with the giftings that he gave you.  With the people that surround you. 

And if all that feels exhausting and just too much:  That you would just know and believe how beautiful you are to him.  And if the world has knocked you down, he will pick you back up, dust off your bruises, and lavish his love on you.

Know today, and always, beautiful one, that YOU are irreplaceable.

~How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!  They are innumerable!  I can't even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!  And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me.~

Psalm 139:17-18

{This post is in response to Holly Gerth's weekly topic "In God's heart, I am irreplaceable".  Check out her blog at www.holleygerth.com}