I sit across from you and hear you speak. Unknowingly, you cast a word or a phrase my way that stings on my flesh. Your words are delivered with a curt sharpness. There is an absence of warmth and a disrespect of courtesy. You exercise the freedom to speak directly about my value — alerting me to the deficits you witness. Humbly, I swallow the fear that is making it’s way up from my core. You don’t attend to the welling in my eyes or the drop in my countenance. You continue to reinforce your authority with words of rejection that you wield with purpose and intent. I succumb to defeat.

Days pass and I realize that my mind has marinated in your characterization. I have granted authority to you. I have relinquished, to you, a stakeholder position at the table. This did not transpire from a bond of trust or connectedness. It just crept in like a thief in the night and acquired the asset without inquiry.

Beat up and bedraggled, I sulk in the loss of my identity. I take up vagrancy looking for the less worthy. I drift and question.

Jesus meets me in the disorientation and channels me to the sacred place where I can be reunited with my intrinsic identity and my significance is laid bare. In the words of my father, are my DNA. He reminds me that I was created with purpose and specific intention. He is the owner of my sufficiency. He reminds me that truth does not belong to the world broken by sin. I am invited to return for recalibration.