It was a Wednesday evening after another 5-hour long planning meeting and ya girl was exhausted. I poured myself a glass of Moscato and played Adekunle’s Gold album.

Track 7 comes on, a favorite.

I smiled – for reasons only the two of us would know.

In search of something to take my mind off the to-do list waiting for me on Notion, I pulled up newsletters I sent to my tribe back in 2020 and opened the one at the top of the list.

The subject line read ‘How are you resting?’ I skimmed through the body of the message and my eyes were met with:

“You don’t know how to rest because you equate your worth with your work.”

Whew! My first thought was God is that you!? This quote hit just as hard the second time around. I’ll spare you the details and skip to what I learned from rereading the words I wrote in 2020.

In today’s intense work environment and the ‘you sleep, we grind’ hustle culture, it can be easy to equate your perceived level of busyness with your self-worth. For far too long I believed the lie that I should always be hustling, always striving because the more I sow, the more I’ll reap… right?

Absolutely not.

The root of my thinking was worry.

I used to worry that If I don’t do enough, then I wouldn’t reach my potential. That I might disappoint myself, my family, and people who look to me for inspo. But here’s the truth; God can do more in our rest, than we can do by striving. Whether it be in our careers, relationships, hobbies — you name it.

In Matthew 6:26, Jesus uses nature to paint this picture:

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

The implied answer is of course – God thinks we’re more valuable than birds. If He provides birds what they need, He will also do the same for those who are of greater worth than birds.

Through reading this verse I was reminded to find my self-worth where it truly matters. It’s not found in the number of checked off items on my to-do list, my successes, perceived failures, from the amount of Instagram followers and networks that I have, or other forms of external validation. It is found in God, and God alone.

So instead of striving, I want to remind you that regardless of what you accomplish today God thinks you’re to die for (yes, I’m referencing that overused quote from Sunday school 🙃). Trust God with whatever situation is currently at hand and let Him be God.