Crying out for love

Have you ever stopped and considered how much time, energy, and money you spend on trying to love, and yet somehow you always forget someone…you.

We’re quick to defend that everyone is beautiful, but that speech usually ends at the mirror.

We’d never let anyone talk down to one of our friends, but we don’t speak up for ourselves.

We say and think “I love you” a countless number of times to scores of people, some we don’t even know, but we rarely mention it to ourselves.

Why is that?

Why is it that everyone seems so deserving of your love, affection and best self, except you? 

We say we feel good about ourselves, and yet we scrutinize our bodies like we were made in some factory and we need to analyze if we’re adequate for mass consumption.

We tell ourselves we’re proud of who we are, but take away that thing we’re proud of and we feel we’ve lost our entire being.

Could you ever look at a flower and say: you’re not good enough, you’re not beautiful, no one will love you, you’re useless, you can’t make it in this world, your ideas are stupid, you’re stupid, you’re not loveable?

It would seem pretty silly wouldn’t it? But we are bold enough and silly enough to say them to ourselves.

Why? When did loving ourselves become the greatest challenge with the biggest obstacles?

Unfortunately, someone, somewhere down the line of your life said something that stuck with you so tightly that ripping it lose has become an never ending battle. It made you question your worth. Someone else decided to determine your value. Someone who had no right! They taught you how to dislike yourself.

It may have been when you were young, perhaps it was someone who should have loved you but didn’t. It may have been a stranger someone you didn’t know very well, and certainly didn’t know you very well. When and where doesn’t matter, the fact is somewhere down the line you decided that to be loved you had to be something specific—thin, pretty, rich, tall, strong, smart, fast, talented etc. The more people you had to please, the more “features” you felt you needed to add.

When we realize we are not that specific thing that is when we decide not to love ourselves.

We become that factory product that’s missing an important feature, and hope that someone will buy us with our defects, the more features we feel we are missing, the less hopeful we become of being purchased or loved. 

But you aren’t some product for the masses! You never were and never will be. Your soul is not up for sale so no one has the right to tell you how to be, not even you.

The only one with any real judgment is God and he loves you just as you are, today, tomorrow, forever. Whoever told you you were not good enough had no right to judge; even you have no right to judge.

You have but one job on this earth, one mission…to love and cherish your soul because in loving your soul you love God.

God already approves of you. He made you and he’s the only one who can decide what is right or wrong with you. There is no need to shout out to be loved, you already are. You simply need to begin to start loving yourself, not as some product, but as a creation from God. You are like a flower, beautiful, real, true, there is nothing wrong with you. What fault can you find in a flower, none. That’s exactly how you are, perfect. 

Forgive those who made you feel inadequate, forgive yourself for buying into it and begin to cherish who you are.

Here’s an idea, be bold and tell yourself “I love you.” Right now, just say it “I love you (name)”