Everything. No, really. Everything.

I get this feeling every time I'm really excited or laugh really hard or let myself simply feel a lot. It is the feeling of expense, the feeling that I am going to exhaust all of my resources, that if I keep this up I will surely run out, left empty with nothing but regret for the frivolous use of who I am. I fear I will run out of desire.

I have this song I've been listening to. It starts off slow, a woman singing in a soft voice, sounding somewhat timid and modest, and then quiets for a bit, her voice softens even more, the music halts.

And then there is an explosion. She screams out, she belts it. Nothing held back. She is in. All of it. There's no worry about expending energy. There's no questioning about breaking rules or being foolish. Just a woman who is all there. Every bit of her, nowhere but the present moment, set on the emotion, the expression, the desire emanating out of a passion in her that says this is worth it.

I was looking back on my journals. There is one in particular, my favorite writing in the past several years. It was written the day after my world was shaken by my counselor, when everything I was learning in the counseling program, everything that was in my head, all the intellect, finally slapped me in the face and slammed into my heart.

That day, I wrote that I was worth everything. I wrote that this work that I would be doing was worth everything. I wrote this work was worth my life. Worth going all in. Worth not looking back. Worth getting bloody, beat up, ticked off, torn up.

Worth dying for. This work was worth dying for. It was worth a life. And I think I felt that because I finally came head to head on with the reality that I was worth dying for. I was worth every bit, every ounce of someone's life. Every ounce of someone's desire. I was not an inconvenience of someone's time, a nuisance with too many needs. Not someone to be avoided, not someone to be silenced. I was worth being sought after, longed, ached, wept for, pursued with a desire that would never run out. Never. I'm talking never. That's what it felt like. It said don't worry because this desire would not be quenched.

It would stay when I was too much, when I said something really stupid, when I sung too loud or awkward or just plain weird, when I wanted to hide because no one wanted to talk to me, when I didn't know what to say, when I did something so shameful I wanted to hide for days. It would stay when I just wanted to be a fucking kid and be goofy as hell. It would allow a fucking kid to be what a kid is, which is spontaneous and unpredictable and full of life and quirkiness and desire.

That is the desire I wrote, the desire that said that you are worth everything. A desire where fuck is a holy word because it carries a desire stronger than shame-based rules.

A desire that would lead to the cross, a desire that would not be quenched even by death. Because I was worth it.

It is easy to say that Christ died for me, but much, much harder to carry the weight, to know the full reality that I am really worth it, That just calls me to way too much glory, way too much possibility, way too much hope. Much easier living a life thinking I am worth nothing than living a life holding an immeasurable glory.