“You’re Loved. You’re worthy of love.”
That showed up in my Twitter feed this morning. I paused for a few moments to consider those two sentences before continuing to scroll through the abbreviated versions of people’s lives.
“You are loved” has been my lifeline for the past year and a half. Heck, I even co-wrote a song about it. It’s been my mantra.
But, “You’re worthy of love” . . . well, now that’s just taking it to a whole new level. And that’s the one where most of us get stuck because we believe otherwise.
It’s easy to believe other people are worthy of love. But myself? Not so much.
We can know and believe all day long that God and our spouses and our children and our friends love us, but until we believe we’re worthy of that love, we can’t fully accept it.
Many of our early experiences are rooted in environments or relationships in which performance and appearance were of supreme importance, which only breeds shame. And where shame grows, self-worth shrivels. When self-worth is rooted in layer upon layer of shame, we find many excuses to reject the love bestowed on us. We push away the very thing we crave.
I’m on a journey of discovery. I’m identifying times when I feel shame, and am writing them down. I’m amazed at how ridiculous some of them are. For instance, I feel shame when my house isn’t clean. Seriously, that’s most of the time! Or when I forget the pest control guy is coming at 8 a.m. {and he’s ALWAYS early}, so I answer the door in my pjs and a sweatshirt. Of course, there are much more serious issues that cause me to feel shame as well.
Whatever the reasons for shame, we have to let go of them in order to discover our worth so we can fully accept the love given to us. But I’m finding that this letting-go thing isn’t so easy. In fact, I’d say it takes more strength to let go of shame than to hold on. Maybe we pry our fingers loose only one at a time, and that’s okay. We have to start somewhere, right? And as we do, Grace grasps each finger that loosens and won’t let go until we are intertwined with him . . . with his love.
There’s no shame so deep, no behavior so bad, nor any performance so good that defines our worth. We are all worthy of love simply because Grace says we are.
“Maybe we pry our fingers loose only one at a time…As we do, Grace grasps each finger that loosens and won’t let go until we are intertwined with him…with his love.” This is beautiful, powerful, and scandalously true. Thank you!