Love
As Valentine’s Day approached this year, I have been thinking about love. Love is one of those words that is hard to define. I know what love is, but it’s one of those things that in order to really understand, you have to experience it. It’s something that I am growing to know the older I get. As a child I knew that I was loved by my family. My parents were especially good about showing me love through playing with me and working with me on my school work. They also expressed their love through their words daily. I always knew that I was loved by my family, and that’s where my journey with love began. When I got into high school I started to struggle with love. I convinced myself I was not a great person and that I was not good enough to be loved or even really liked. I felt like an outsider socially and was very defeated. This mindset continued into college and really drug me down. I felt worthless. I didn’t feel like I had much to offer the world and spent a lot of time feeling lonely. When I was in that place, I was in survival mode. I craved love and acceptance but I wasn’t able to find it. I was so focused on filling the void in my life that I was unable to love the people around me.
During my second year of college things started to shift. I went on a month-long backpacking trip. As I prepared for the trip, I read a book called “Abba’s Child,” written by Brennan Manning. The book is all about learning to accept how loved we are by God. Part of the trip involved me sitting in the desert by myself for 36 hours. Over the course of my solo time, I learned to silence my mind before my Lord and when I did this, I felt peace wash over me and I knew how loved I truly am.
Today I am overwhelmed by a sense of incredible love from the Creator of the whole universe. Because my God loves me, I can love myself. I know that I don’t have to be perfect, but I can just be me, and I know that I am fully known and loved. That lesson has been one of the most powerful ones in my life. Accepting God’s love for me freed me to stop trying to earn acceptance. That doesn’t mean that I always feel lovable. In fact, when I am affirmed or complemented, I usually make a joke to put myself down. I feel uncomfortable with people accepting me because I lived so long feeling unworthy of love. Just yesterday I met someone who said that they have heard good things about me, and my response was, “Well, don’t believe everything you hear.” They were trying to be nice, but I was so uncomfortable with being accepted that I had to deflect that comment.
Today, I live a life full of love despite my feelings of self-doubt. I know that my Creator loves me more that I can possibly fathom and that gives me the confidence to live a life in which I am free from finding my value in what I do. I know that I do not have to earn love; I am loved and there is absolutely nothing that can stop me from being loved. As I have learned to accept love from my Savior, I have been able to accept myself more and I have become a more loving person. I realized this when I started working for OneLife. I met my students and after a short time I realized that I had a lot of love for each of them. It was a deep love that reflects the love my Lord has for me. I loved them not because of anything that they were doing but simply because I know how loved I am. 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us” (NIV). I have a new-found appreciation for this verse because I have experienced it first-hand. Because I strive to live in a way that reflects my own belovedness, I see people around me as Abba’s beloved children, too.
I am a broken person. I know the truth that I am loved but I am constantly rejecting it. I am a work in progress and there is beauty in the refining process, in the journey. I struggle with love for myself, but I love others freely because I know that my heavenly Father loves me so much that he sent his Son to die so that I can live with him for all eternity. I know how to love others because of people, like my parents, who love me well and because of the overwhelming love that is from my God. God is love and as one who strives to reflect him, I must embody love so that others can know how loved they truly are. Living out of a place of love and acceptance is truly freeing.
