“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.” Psalm 143:8
I am Loved.
How often do you hear the words “I love you”? How often do you say those words? Do you mean it? Do the people saying it to you mean it? Do you feel unloved more often than you feel loved? Have we cheapened the mighty power of love? Do we even really know what love is?
I remember the first time someone outside of my family said “I love you.” I have to say, it caught me off guard and for a brief moment, I almost didn’t know what to say or how to respond. It wasn’t a boy who said it to me either. It was actually one of the first people I could truly call a friend. She was one of my best friends from 4th grade all the way until graduation. When she said those words to me that day and gave me a hug goodbye after school, she opened up a whole new world for me that I had never known existed. People actually said that to each other? People cared about me that much that they would say those words to me? It’s not like we didn’t hear those words at home. Any time we left or said good night, we would say “I love you,” but I think saying it all the time became rote and the meaning of it got lost somewhere in translation. We weren’t super touchy feely as a family either and it is incredible to be swept up into a life where hugging becomes the norm and human touch is something you didn’t realize you wanted or needed until it becomes a constant presence in your life.
Often times, we don’t realize how much we need love in our lives until we truly experience it for the first time. We all long for love and search for it in our own ways, trying to fill that empty void in our lives, but how will we know what it is when it hits us if we’ve never really experienced it before? Let me tell you, that is one of the beauties of being loved. Once someone opens that door and starts to show you the way to being loved, your life will be forever changed. It may be difficult and foreign to accept at first. You may even buck at it and turn yourself away from it to prevent yourself from being hurt or disappointed or rejected. But the more people push into your life and pull you out of yourself, you start to realize you don’t have as many things to be afraid of anymore. You slowly start to change and realize you too are capable of loving others and returning the love that has been given to you. Loving someone is the greatest gift you could give them, and even though it may be one of the most challenging things to do in this life, it is by far the most rewarding things you will ever experience.
I want to tell you right now that you are loved more deeply and more intimately than you could ever imagine. You are not loved because of your looks or your clothes or your choices in music or movies. You are not loved because you make the most money or donate all that money to charities. You are not loved because you are the greatest athlete or the greatest artist or the greatest teacher or banker or lawyer or doctor or the greatest anything. You are loved simply because you are you.
You were created out of love. You were born out of love. Every single moment and breath you breath in this life, you are loved. Every mistake, every heartache, every misery, every sorrow–you are loved. Every happy moment, every joy, every celebration– you are loved. Every ugly beautiful part of you is loved. God is love and He loves you. If you don’t know what that means, I challenge and urge you to take a look at His Word, the Bible, and ask Him to show you what love really means. The kind of love He gives us is so far beyond our human comprehension, but it as simple as someone saying to you for the first time, “I love you.”
He loves you. I love you. If you have never been told those words before, I want you to know that I love you. And, I love myself. It isn’t always easy, but I am learning to love myself more and more each day so I can learn to love others more fully in my life. Tell yourself you are loved and share that love with someone else today. You might be surprised at how far a little love can go.
theatregirl18 