INHERENT WORTH AND BEING A DAD
I have a really hard time believing in my worth or value.
I know that’s wrong, and I know it’s unfortunate, yet I still hang on this imbedded idea that “worth” and “Sean” are somehow incompatible 90% of the time. How the hell did I get here?
The truth is I didn’t have the perfect childhood. Go figure. Raise your hand if you did. My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic - a very evil, scary, and abusive disease for everyone caught in its vicinity - and my single, divorced, overwhelmed dad had to pick up the pieces with a less-than-perfect fatherly lineage that begot him. Let’s say it was a complicated upbringing. Now, at 35, I’m unpacking what that complication developed in me. “Yay.”
I’ve read a lot about attachment theory this year in hopes of defining a bit of the ambiguous cloud that generally hovers over me. Turns out, I have an Anxious Preoccupied Attachment style, “often associated with an inconsistent parenting pattern (source linked).” Characteristics of this attachment style include various forms of insecurity and the need for external validation, ie. an inconsistent understanding of personal worth or value.
The theory goes, if a child grows up with a confusing household where it’s difficult to understand the emotional states and responses of the caregivers, that child is going to have a mis-formed sense of security and trust internally and externally, to which he’ll basically spend the rest of his existence trying to fill that hole with people or things that seem to promise a semblance of security, only to constantly find himself fearing the closeness and pushing those away who actually care while simultaneously wondering why nobody likes him. Or something like that.
So, I’ve noticed a bit of these characteristics in my own life, understandably. It shows up at work, it shows up in friendships, it shows up in my marriage, and most unfortunately its showing up in the way that I interact with my kiddos - chiefly in my son.
I find myself getting triggered by this little boy and flying off the broom handle at times. And I can see it scares and confuses him (My stomach churns even writing that). “Shit, I’m doing to my son what I tried so hard to run as far away from as possible.” Ever said that?
And it seems to all drain back into this confusion of worth and value, and my theory is this: if I understood my inherent worth - really understood the truth that I am loved deeply, cared for, desired, and hoped-the-best-for - it could flip the narrative so I could pour out instead of constantly trying to fill this broken cistern that is not (maybe never?) satisfied. So I took a walk around the block a couple weeks ago and was given this bit of insight (taken directly from a journal entry from the walk):
How do I know I have inherent worth? Simply because God decided to give me life.
The most perfect being in the entire universe could do literally anything he wants to do, and part of that “anything” he wanted was to create little ‘ole me - breathing life into my bones, forming my hair and my skin and my blood, the most minute details to the grandest aspects of who I am - he took his perfect time to make me.
My value is calculated just on the simple fact that the most important, worthy being in the entire known and unknown universe crafted me - so if I’m looking for proof or external validation, there you go.
Historically that proof has been anchored by my own efforts - if I do good THEN I’m worthy. My external validation is driven only by my works - and I suck at a lot of good works, so of course when I fail often I’m reminded that I’m unworthy of love, or anything really.
Here’s the antithesis: the true external validation of my worth [or anyone’s for that matter] comes from the most simple truth that I experience his goodness on an hourly, minute-by-minute, second-by-second basis. My experience of his good will, his good lavishing upon my life, is the validation of worth I’ve been craving. The afternoon sun warming me on a drive, the sound of Bray’s laugh when jumping on the trampoline, the tenderness that immediately turns into a raging ball of fire of Em…but I have not been paying attention to that because I’ve been focused on trying to prove my own value by my working, through what I achieve - [whether that be a PR in the garage-gym, a salary bump, or a #1 dad mug that I still haven’t gotten...]
External validation comes from experience of God’s goodness and a posture of thankfulness for experiencing that good. And here’s the kicker, I’m not responsible for proving my own worth and value…that’s the work of the [a] father.
Conclusion: I’m worthy and valuable because I am, and it’s not my burden to prove it - it’s my responsibility AND opportunity to embolden that within my children.
If I woke up everyday believing in that sentence right there, I’m almost positive I’d be equipped with everything I need to parent (and exist).
I’ve been very sensitive to what kind of attachment Bray (and Em) are forming as a response to my emotive states. It should be obvious - I don’t want them to have an Anxious Preoccupied Attachment style. So what I’m leaning (as hard as I possibly can) into right now is that I don’t need external validation from sources that don’t provide real validation for my worthiness, or my value. I must show up vulnerably, honestly, and without pretension to wherever I am knowing that my works aren’t the key. And as I steward the two little lives I have in my presence, as I experience the wonder bursting from every single pore of who they are, I center myself in a posture of thankfulness for the opportunity to fortify their embedded value through a consistent and constant presence of love.
Proverbs 4:23 “Keep [guard] your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”