I remember always having this desire to have someone love me for me. And you may be asking yourself well why would you think someone doesn't love you for you? To be totally candid? I let the lie of the enemy attack me for more years that I would like to admit. Every time I would look at my desire to marry and become a wife and mama it was seated in a place where I feared no one would want to be with me forever because I had friends leave, boyfriends lie, and boys in general basically convince me I was not good enough while simultaneously telling me I was 'too much' and 'too good' for them. Words of contradiction left and right; it never made sense.
With each broken heart, may it be from a lost friendship or relationship, I would run to my own mama lost and confused feeling like I had been so blind to everything that was going on, and fearing that everything I was told in those moments was true. I feared I wouldn't be loved. And she would always tell me that I was loved and loveable and that the right person would come along and see that in me. I would cry some more and contemplate the thought, and my usual response was, "But why can't anyone love me?" She would look at me with tears in her eyes as she saw her little girl with a broken heart that fully believed she wasn't worthy of love, and reply, "Oh, sweetie, you are loved. Your dad, and brother, and I love you SO SO much. And so do so many others." I would often come back with, "But you guys have to love me because you're my parents. You will always think I'm loveable." And I could see the big painful mama tears roll down her cheek as she would cry not only for my hurting heart, but also over the fact that, in all these years she has loved me so unconditionally and so perfectly how I needed it even when I didn't recognize it or appreciate it, I still felt the only people who loved me had a biased opinion of me and only loved me because I was their child; and parent's have to love their child, right?
Boy, was I wrong. In the last few years I have seen a bigger change in my view on love and who I am in Christ than I ever have before. I began to notice that with each passing friendship and relationship in my life I kept coming back to an underlying fear that people wouldn't love me if they saw what was under the surface, or it seemed to be confirmed when I would share more intimately about myself or confide in others and they would either disappear or it began to feel like a pity friendship.
I never ever knew where these feelings came from, and I now
know without a doubt those thoughts were and are from the enemy.
The need for a deep relationship and fellowship with others is normal and natural and good, but somewhere along the lines I gave the enemy a foothold in that area of my life and I became conditioned to believe that I was a burden more than anything else in life and that desire was not good.
So, what has changed my thinking?
Honestly? A conversation with a boy and a conversation with my dad. I have noticed more and
more my need for an open conversation with my dad, and recognizing that he is still my
protector as a grown single woman. (Becoming more and more engulfed in a relationship with
my Heavenly Father has helped me realize much of this, but that is for another post.)
So, let me explain.
In the last year I have noticed a deeper and more serious mood swing before my cycle begins [stick with me, I'm not going to get weird on you], and I wanted to take a serious look at this because I felt it was harming my relationships with my friends, family, and potential relationship, and I wanted to reign it in. In these moments I would come to the point of emotions being so incredibly low I did nothing but sabotage every good thing in my life. I would say hurtful and totally untrue things to people that meant the most to me, I would try to end relationships by being a totally unrecognizable version of myself, and I would see these things happening as if I was a spectator and could do nothing about it all while being the one actually doing them. Now I'm sure you're thinking "oh, you could stop those things, you just didn't."
I promise I'm not lying when I say I felt like two different people in the same body with one destroying and the other looking on in horror unable to move or stop anything.
Well, after seeing this months on end, medication making me feel like I was manic and depressed at the exact same time I finally called it quits. I had no idea what was happening, but in that moment a sweet boy felt the brunt of my low at that time and somehow made things more clear to me. I had decided that I wasn't in a place to give a relationship a chance, but was not at peace about it in the same moment. In that low I remarked that I was thankful that he had helped me realize that I could be loved even if that was all that would come out of knowing each other. He simply said to me, "Why would you ever think you aren't loved?" To which I tearfully typed a reply of the things in my past that I felt made me unloveable to those I would meet. This sweet man replied, "I'm so sorry you had to go through those things, but you should know you will always have someone who loves you." I don't know who he meant by that in the moment, but it didn't matter; suddenly something flipped in my mind and I knew he was right:
I was, and am, loved for who I am.
In the fallout of what would happen over the next month or so I couldn't help but still feel at a loss and have a heavy heart that I couldn't hold down a good relationship, and I felt like I still had so much to me that no man would want to bring into their life. This was years of lies all built up and I was starting to see it for what it was, but let's take a step back a few years first.
I remember in the midst of my painful broken hearts always wanting to run to my dad and just have him hug me, but never feeling like I could. Not because I felt he wouldn't, but because for some reason my pride kept me from wanting to admit that I needed my dad when all my life I wanted nothing more than to be the daughter that wasn't a burden to her parents (sounds so sad when I read it now, as I know I've never been a burden to them if you were to ask them). But as I went through one of these painful moments where it took every ounce of my strength just to get out of bed and function each day I found it in myself to swallow my pride and one day I walked into my parents' house, stood at the top of the stairs silenty looking at my dad while holding back tears, and waited. He simply asked, "Are you ok?" I took a deep breath, swallowed, shook my head no, and let the tears fall, "Dad, I just need you to hug me please," I barely got the words out before I was a pile of tears and he engulfed me in a hug that my heart needed more than anything else in the world. In that moment I gave up my pride and realized how often I had pushed that cry of my heart aside and not actually asked for the thing my heart longed for the most- my father's comfort in the form of a hug.
Fast forward a year or so and I found myself at a loss again- this time for feeling inadequate rather than with a broken heart. I knew the only way I would be able to sort through this would be to talk to my dad; I needed to know his heart toward me more than anything else, right then and there. (I had prayed so many times about my insecurities and kept asking God to help comfort me, but I just kept feeling the only way I would get what I needed in that moment was to talk to my dad.) So, one morning before work I pulled up to their house to get some coffee, and I decided to talk to dad about everything. In that moment I needed to know if I was a lost cause when it came to the chance of someone wanting to marry me, and that all these things I kept thinking about myself were just worries in my head. He did more than that in that moment. I won't go into detail of what we talked about, but I was late for work that morning for very good reason. He helped me see myself and my relationship with my parents in a new light.
In that moment I came to realize that the love my parents have for me isn't because they have to love me. They don't lie when they tell me that a friend, or a man, would be lucky to have someone like me in their life. They're being honest. But why didn't I believe that until I was 25 years old?!
It finally dawned on me that they love me BECAUSE they know me. They know my ugly days, emotions, and habits, and they know my heart, my passions, and my love. They don't gloss over the bad and only see the good in me- they see the good and the bad and love me just the same. Yes, they are my parents, but that doesn't mean they have to love me. There are many kids out there that parents have left/abandoned, abused, or even faced being straight up told that they aren't loved.
The love of my parents mirrors the Love of God in my life.
God knows my sins and my proclivities and chooses to love me just the same.
So yes, I am loved and I am loveable. I don't feel the need to find someone who will love me like I used to. I know I am loved, and while sometimes I desperately need to be reminded that I am loved and loveable, I know deep down who I am... I just forget sometimes.
God IS love my sweet friends. It's ok to need to be reminded that you are loved. It is healthy to want those relationships, but please my sweet sweet friend if those words "you are not enough," "you are too much," or "you will never be loved," are creeping into your mind, find the ones who love you most, push your pride aside and ask them to remind you.. then let them remind you of why they love you, and know they aren't lying. They know the deepest parts of you and love you because of them not in spite of them.
