Word of the Day

cheap

a:  of inferior quality or worth:  tawdry, sleazy <cheap workmanship>

b:  contemptible because of lack of any fine, lofty, or redeeming qualities <feeling cheap>

A word I learned early on to hate. 

I couldn't define it, but I knew what it meant. People who were cheap were valueless. Worthless. A waste of space and time. There was no fixing "cheap". It was a degenerative character analysis to be avoided at all cost.

But here's the thing about terms like "cheap", they're relative. One man's trash is another man's treasure. And that applies to people as well as things. So while the abusers in my life saw me as cheap, tawdry, sleazy, irredeemable, even contemptible, that didn't make any of those definitions permanent or even accurate. 

For years, I've fought to discover my value as a person. Is it determined by how much money I make annually? By how productive I am in a given time period? By my weight or my car or my house or my husband or my kids or how many "good works" I do?

Is my value based on how healthy I am (another variable definition)? What I choose to do for relaxation? What I eat or drink, or don't eat or don't drink?

The recurring answer I hear when I let myself relax and listen is this, I am not cheap. I am valuable because I am a person. A being made in the image of God. I exist because God has a purpose for me. I may never know or understand that purpose, but that doesn't change the fact of its existence. 

Lately, I've been praying a series of rules or daily offices or prayers (whatever you want to call them) and this line keeps standing out to me

Fulfill now, O Lord our desires and petitions as may be best for us,

     granting us in this world the knowledge of Your truth . . . 

I have chosen to trust in God's knowledge of me. I have chosen to trust that He knows what is best for me, regardless of what I ask. I believe God has much better things to do than worry about cheap people or stuff. If His desire is to hear from me and grant me the knowledge of His truth, then there's no way I'm cheap.

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