You are Valued.

A few weeks back I was asked the question, "Being where you are, what is the greatest physical need you see of the people you work with?"

There are a lot of needs here.  Daily I see people who are hungry - literally walking through the streets or sitting outside the market begging, looking half starved.  Daily I see people who are shoeless with battered and scarred feet.  Daily I see people who are struggling for work, people whose "job" it is to dig through trashcans all day long hoping to find some glass or plastic for recycling.  Daily I see kids wandering through the streets instead of in school getting an education.  Daily I see kids carrying around kids, playing the role of mother or father to a younger sibling.  The needs are incredible and often overwhelming.  So... there are a million ways to answer that question.  But here is what the Lord has been laying on my heart and how I chose to answer...

"Value."

Now maybe you don't think that sounds like much of a "physical" need, but I chose to disagree.  In fact, I think value is one of the greatest physical needs we have, and maybe the one least recognized.  We crave it, hunger for it, thirst for it.  We all need it.  A life lacking value is no life at all.

Every person longs to be loved.  And what is love really?  I choose to believe it's giving value to someone - seeing and speaking into the person they are by choosing to accept them unconditionally, cherish them, honor them, respect them, and lavishing them with every ounce of worth and belief in them you can pour out.  Value.

Value gives security.
Value gives confidence.
Value raises up within a person a voice they've always had but never knew how to use.
Value unleashes freedom - freedom to dream, to be bold, to risk.
Value makes a person not simply feel they are loved but truly know they are lovable.

Over five and a half years ago, I was walking down a dirt road through a sleepy roadside town called Salgaa.  In Kenya, Salgaa is known as one of many prostitution towns.  How I got there is for another story, but living in Kenya during that year, visiting Salgaa became a part of my regular routine.  Weekly I would go and simply meet women - visiting in their homes and taking time to listen to their story.  On one such occasion early on in my year there, I had just finished up three different home visits.  Returning to my home that afternoon, my spirit was overwhelmed.  It had been a hopeless feeling kind of day.  The struggle was so real, the questions many, and yet the answers seemed just out of reach.  In tears, I remember sitting at my table with my journal in hand, writing down all the stories I had heard that day - half recalling the details, half praying and crying out to God as I wrote.  "What do I do with this, Lord?  What answer do you have for these women?  Every day is a struggle.  Every decision tears them apart.  The shame is piled high in their lives.  There's no value left in their eyes - they truly see themselves as worthless."  Desperate journaling that went on for a good hour or so until the tears were so many I could hardly see to write anymore.  And as I dropped the pen and buried my head into my arms, I'll never forget the moment I heard the Lord speak.  "Kristy, what do these women need?"  Food, jobs, education for their children, a second chance, Jesus, friends, homes, safety and protection, to move, freedom - countless answers began to flood my thoughts.  Then again, "Kristy, what did you see today?"  Brokenness, poverty, desperation, tears, hurt, loneliness... 'what didn't I see?' I thought to myself.  I had seen so much hurt, so much desperation, so much deep shame that it was breaking these women apart, sucking the life right out of them and removing all light from their eyes.  When they looked at the world, they saw hopelessness, and when they looked into my eyes that day, what I saw was women desperately searching for something... value.

"They need to know their value," I wrote in my journal.  These women are not women who had a lot of friends, in fact, apart from one another, they didn't have any.  They didn't get visitors coming into their homes.  They didn't have people giving them a courteous smile as they pass by or even making eye contact with them at all.  Life had stripped away all value from them, teaching them they were completely and utterly worthless.

That day, the Lord wrote over my life a new banner I would carry with me every day moving forward, "Teach someone their value and they will fight to keep it."

I desperately long for people, not just women, to know their worth.  I long for people to see themselves as valuable and valued.  To see them know they are valued sons and daughters of the High King, to understand they have endless worth, and to see them walk and live in confidence knowing they are valuable and have value to bring to this world.  And I truly believe that if we will take the time to walk alongside people, to teach them and call out the value we see in them and the value their heavenly Father has given them, they will fight to keep that value.  They will walk differently, talk differently, think differently, see the world differently, dream differently.  They will not be quick to lay down their value and allow shame to wash over them again because they will know their worth!

What if we could take the time to love people?  To walk alongside them for the long haul, daily seeing them and letting them know they are seen.  Daily being present in their lives and speaking truth, hope, faith, and love over them.  Daily calling out in them the incredible value we see and, even greater, the incredible value the Father has given to them.

Take the time to teach someone their value and they will fight to keep it.