Grappling With Our Worthiness

Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

—Philippians 3:7–8

Sometimes I pretend that writing is very cut and dried. I’m a writer. He’s a plumber, she’s a teacher, I’m a writer. Everybody has a job. That’s a way of distancing myself from the uncomfortable side of it: sharing your work is scary, and it’s an invitation to grapple with your own worthiness.

If you’re not careful, you’ll hang your entire self-worth on getting published or getting a certain amount of page views. We might feel like failures if we don’t get them. But it’s equally dangerous if you do get them. Little by little it’s easy to start needing them—the comments, the reader e-mails, the Amazon rating, the positive reviews, the Twitter mentions or the Facebook likes.

Remember why you started writing in the first place. You write because you have a story to tell, because you sense that you can find words for things that might matter to someone else, that might set them free, that will make them feel less alone, like they’ve made a friend, like they’re not crazy, like they’re not wrong just for being who they are. You write because you think it might matter to someone, the way other people’s words mattered to you.