Appraisal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzohCexrWTQ

I have a confession. I’m mad. Mad about writing this blog over. And if it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t do it. In fact, three years ago, when I laid sprawled out on my almost bare floor frantically searching for how to recover words beautifully written, I declared in my heart I’ll never pen this blog again. I was crushed. All my labor. A creative orchestra now disassembled that I believed could never be strung together so precisely. Yet, today I choose out of obedience to allow Him to help me compose it anew.

As of late, God has been reminding me of dumpsters and redemption. The inspiration that led me to write years ago was a dumpster at my mother’s home. In every direction, there was stuff. Here a stuff. There a stuff. Everywhere stuff stuff. And I wanted no parts of it. I wanted it gone, removed, and departed. It was stressful. And even more so because my momma wouldn’t let me throw stuff away. I relished opening the doors and telling the community, “everyting one dolla.”

She was just a fussing about how I needed patience, that I didn’t understand the value of the items in my hand, and that even within many of them, there could be more treasure. I just side-eyed her as I asked whether or not this or that could be tossed.

As we moved about each room, I discovered behind those ancient relics (that I thought should be returned there) were stories. My great grandparents’. The places they had lived. The coordinates to which they traveled. And the realities and struggles of being Black and accomplished when they weren’t expected to be. It was a history lesson I would have ignorantly ignored. And as I unzipped and flipped, I did find more gold.

Thank God for my mom. She understood the value of a thing when I didn’t. She had been taught and trained to know the worth of artifacts I would have easily set aside as worthless. Now don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of excess that needed disposal. In one season, those served as a sort of security for my great grandparents who had waded through The Great Depression. However, that same doom didn’t hang over my head pressing me to keep stacks of tin foil and dozens of peroxide bottles.

Though when I think of it, I was once those horded commodities. And I suppose to some, still am. But God did a beautiful thing by placing me in relationships where I could finally embrace my worth rather than see myself as a throwaway. Through an unlikely friendship, I began to see, feel, believe, and speak about me contrarily to what I had seen, felt, believed, and had spoken over me by many before.

The first day, or really the third time I encountered this individual, he had been sent on assignment to help restore an unkempt thing – me. I still remember his words – “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” We were speaking about one thing, but with every syllable he seemed to pierce my wounded soul. Through patience, kindness, tenderness, and invitation, I experienced the love and intentionality of my Father in another chiseled vessel like my own.

I remember the day I sat across from him as he intently listened to the song of my heart. He told me, “Whitney, you are a diamond in the rough. You're a gem. But not every man wants a diamond.” I thought I had written everything fitting about appraisal in that first blog, but I hadn’t. He taught me something new. It wasn’t just people who are unskilled in assessing our value who will mishandle us. But it is those capable of comprehending it, yet our being isn’t invaluable to them. It’s like those tin foils and bottles I so easily cast aside as unnecessary. Yet to my great grandmother they were of great importance.

The gift of his friendship in that season was that he made me realize that I could be essential to a different kind of man. And this rings true for friendships, places of employment and venture, and even the days in which we live. He’d frequently tell me I was essential. That I was needed. And he didn’t just say it with words; he demonstrated it with his actions. My past trauma and folly created a conviction that if it was not both spoken and experienced, it wasn’t real. Well, he made me a believer.

Heartbreak, damage, abandonment, cursing, loss, and deprivation will have you questioning you. Are you worth it? Are you worth anything? Even when the Author of your being inscribes the truth about you upon the clouds, you dismiss them as outlandish dreams. That’s what the brokenness of this world gifts us – doubt. So, God sent His Word, a Son, to dispel the myth that His thoughts about us are make believe. When He said that He takes great delight in us and rejoices over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17), He means it. When He calls us His treasured possessions and chosen ones (1 Peter 2:9), He declares what’s true. When He molds us and says that we are His masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10), He intends us for display and not to throwaway.

Because God made us. Because He sacrificed His own Son, there’s no question of our worth. We are worth a perfect life spilled out though we be but dirt and rags. However, He understands the frailty of our hearts and minds to accept realities we haven’t experienced on earth. In fact, most of us have experienced the opposite of His goodness which makes us question it to begin with. So, He still sends sons and daughters to help restore unkempt and thrown away things to make them something beautiful and useful to the Appraiser.