“I” Am Worthy

Nodami, the Absurd Stranger stopped by and commented on my post about platitudes. The name of the blog was intriguing so I stopped by to see what an Absurd Stranger is. In one of the posts, Nodami quotes a passage from Ayn Rand.

“To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’ “

The quote reminded me of a church retreat I once attended. Seated in a circle, each participant was asked to tell their neighbor to the right, “You are worthy of God’s love and grace.” Then each of us was asked to repeat the sentence to the neighbor on our left. You know, it’s as easy to say that to another person as it is to hear it coming from them. Both saying it to another and hearing it give you a warm, fuzzy kind of feeling. But the exercise wasn’t over.

Next, each participant was asked to repeat the sentence to their neighbors with one small change. We had to replace the words “You are” with “I am”. That warm, fuzzy quickly turned into a cold, prickly feeling for most of us as we each stuttered and stammered our way through the remainder of the exercise. Some of us, myself included, broke into tears at the sheer difficulty in saying, “I am worthy of God’s love and grace.”

I don’t have a “moral” to this story. Just that self-affirmation is very difficult for most of us. It’s easy to give a compliment; hard to accept one. Accept the fact that, whatever your faith, you are worthy of your God’s love and grace as well of the love and grace of those around you. You are worthy… and so am I.