Loved
I've been mulling over my relationship with being loved. I'm not good at it. I have had seasons where I've been somewhat more able to receive God's love. Unfortunately I'm realizing this has not been one of those seasons.
My sense of worth and loveability has been so tied up in my ability to be useful, helpful, likeable, etc... This has been a struggle my whole life. I was starting to get the better of it a few years ago. But then I got settled into my job and did well, and found a sense of identity and worth in that. I got comfortable with my role at church and the House of Prayer. I got used to only doing things I was good at. I got comfortable hiding behind what I can do to show how worthwhile I am, and didn't have to keep doing the work of letting myself accept being loved simply because God and the people in my life want to love me. I, who am incredibly aware of my faults and shortcomings, forgot how to believe I have worth that has nothing to do with my actions or choices.
Then I went to the UK. The first day of my volunteer job with 24-7 was taking minutes (something I'd never done before) with a group I was just meeting, some for the first time in several years, and the rest for the first time ever. The whole spring and summer I tried to do the kind of job that would blow people out of the water and show them how on the ball I am, but it seemed like the harder I tried the less 'on the ball' I felt like I came across.
This year I've had to get used to another culture, to setting my own schedule, to a new community, new churches, new friends, new jobs. I've had to rely on the generosity of others for everything from learning how to shop for groceries in another country, to gifts of money, to a place to lay my head at night. Needless to say, I've felt pretty insecure about it all, wondering if everyone's tired of my needy imperfection. I can't help but wonder if I've been handing things well or (now that I think about it) if I'm disappointing God by my insecure fumblings.
Then I came home mid-August and I've had a rather hard time finding work, so I've been living on next to nothing, wearing the same 2 pairs of trousers and 4 shirts I brought with me when I thought I'd have my visa and be back to the UK in a month or two. It's been a struggle feeling needy, unfashionable, poor and every other worth-whittling thing I've experienced in the past 9+ months.
Sometimes I can be a bit thick in the head, and I'm only now seeing how God has been stripping away everything that I hide behind to show me how very convinced I am in my heart that nobody will really, truly love me unless I give them a reason, and then I have to keep giving them reasons. I don't have a hard time being liked, appreciated, enjoyed or even needed, but loved...that feels a step too far, and I don't know how to be just loved. I don't know how to change that broken part of my heart that doesn't believe I'm actually worth loving.
Ephesians 3:16-19 says "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Yesterday I thought about this passage and realized that I am not rooted and grounded in His love. I'm rooted and grounded in the lie that I'm not worth being loved for who I am, and this lie is stealing life from me.
I know in my head that my worth is not based in me, but in the price that God was willing to pay for me. I get that and I believe that for others. I just don't know how to get that from my head to my heart in regard to me. I don't know how to let Him change my heart, but I've started by asking Him. I can't imagine what it's like to truly believe that I'm worth loving just as I am. By the grace of God I have had many experiences where He does something or changes something in me that I couldn't imagine could be changed, so I just chose to trust that He will help me, that He will convince my heart of its worth. In that trust I have hope that God, who began a good work in me and has brought me to the place of seeing this mess in my heart, is able and faithful to finish it.
