Remember Where Your Value Comes From

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. - Psalm 139:13-14

A few years back, just a couple of months before my birthday, my grandfather (or Pawpaw as I call him) surprised me by telling me he was going to build me a dining table as a birthday present.

I was beyond excited at the news. For quite some time I had wanted to own something my Pawpaw built. He was quite the carpenter and had built several pieces for my mom in the house I grew up in. But I wanted something for myself that I could take with me to all of my future homes now that I was an adult.

Needless to say, I couldn’t wait to see the table he built for me. He asked me for some inspiration images and had me take a few measurements, and he got to work.

Once my Pawpaw was done with the table, he had me come by his shop to look at it and make sure I liked it, and didn’t want to make any last-minute adjustments before I took it home.

As I looked over the table, my jaw was on the floor. It was everything I had hoped for and more. The look, the style, the color, all of it. It was absolutely perfect.

On one side of the tabletop, there was a notch shaped like a half-moon. My Pawpaw said he knew that was an imperfection in the wood, and if I wanted him to fill the hole, he could. But I told him not to. I liked that it made the table unique. It added character. And it didn’t look like a cookie-cutter piece of furniture you could buy in the store.

I noticed the notch in my table this morning while I was straightening the kitchen. And the sight of the imperfection made me smile, thinking of that memory in my Pawpaw’s shop. But that notch also prompted a small nudge from the Holy Spirit. It’s like He was whispering to my heart, saying, “Kristen, why do you think it’s so easy for you to see that imperfection as something that adds value and makes this table unique, while you look at your own imperfections as problems that need to be fixed or issues that need to be erased?”

Immediately, I thought of the countless number of times I make negative comments about my own imperfections in the mirror, wondering why I have to have these imperfections and why there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix to get rid of them. It’s a really bad habit I have, a mentality I don’t want to struggle with for the rest of my life. But it’s one I’ve wrestled with for a long, long time.

As I thought about this parallel the Holy Spirit drew for me between the table and myself, I thought of one more detail about my dining table that I loved from the moment I saw it.

On the underside of the tabletop, my Pawpaw had branded the words “Handcrafted by Dewey Collins - Pawpaw, February 2020"

When I first saw the branding on the table, it brought tears to my eyes. The branding exemplified why this table was so special to me. It wasn’t because it looked like the kind of dining table I’d always wanted. It was because my Pawpaw created it.

Just like the Lord created me.

We all have imperfections. We all have things about ourselves that don’t fit the cookie-cutter ideal we have in our heads or our social media feeds. And while it’s true that those things make us unique and special, those aren’t the things that define us.

We are defined by who created us.

Just like that notch in my table. Yes, it added character. Yes, it made it unique. But the value came from the branding, from the fact that it was created by my Pawpaw. And friend, your value comes from the fact that you were created by your Heavenly Father who loves you more than you could ever imagine.

So if you’re struggling with your imperfections today, if you’re wishing away the unique qualities you possess, I hope the story behind my dining table serves as a reminder of where your true value is rooted. And I pray the next time you’re tempted to criticize something about yourself, you’ll instead take a second to thank the Lord for creating you the way He did, and that you’ll choose to rest in the fact that your worth comes from Him and Him alone.