I’ve been all twisted up inside, like the lure cast wrong on a fly fisherman’s pole. I’m trying to untangle the line inside my head hooked on self-worth. It needs to be cut off.

H and I sit in armchairs facing each other, pondering a contract to cure the terminal disease on my front lawn. I’ve always done the gardening but sometimes you have to let go of what you don’t know, as much as cultivating what you do.

While we talk about the cost, guilt rises to the middle of my throat. I tell him I think I should get a job, contribute something to the family.  Because someone already helps me clean and now we’re thinking about someone to help me do the yard work and I’m capable, feeling like an invalid when I can walk.

“No,” he shakes his head, arches his eyebrows. “I want you to do what God has called you to do. You haven’t spent a year on this for nothing.”

I’m writing. Towards a dream not yet fully formed while hanging on to God’s coat tails over craggy courage and dark days of waiting. I have no idea where He’s taking me but He stops long enough to let me linger in the landscape. Capture slanted light illuminating the beauty of his sheep for brief moments.

H reminds me what the sheep look like, the ones that come to the altar of this blog. They carry loneliness, discouragement, sickness and loss. Struggle with miscarriage, separation, adoption and divorce. Wear scars from the church, their parents, adult children and strangers.

And while I’m preoccupied with value, there just isn’t a measuring stick for serving words, offering the cup of prayer, yielding to the voice of consolation?

Perhaps I’ve stood in the same spot too long, distracted by the crowds grazing on the hillsides of plenty, while Jesus searches for one.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. (Psalm 16:6 ESV)

Do you measure your self-worth by what you do, instead of who you are? Let’s hurl that measuring stick together, shall we?

Linking with Jennifer, Ann, Duane, Emily, Life Unmasked.

This is #24 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments here on Friday. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.