Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

In early November, I wrote a blog about loving myself. I won't rehash the rambling (it's just a few posts down), but it was me trying to talk myself into loving myself, despite the fact that I had all these insecurities, and self-doubt, and self-loathing built up inside of me. I thought, Maybe if I write this, confess it to the world (or, at least the people who read my blog), all of this negativity in my life will go away. Turns out, life doesn't work that way.

I've been on a kick lately, if you haven't noticed, of confessing things. I confessed that I was jealous, that I had been in evil-writer mode, that I didn't love myself the way I should, among so many other things that have been confessed verbally, or to my journal, or to Vince. Those confessions were written with multiple planned-purposes.

1. To hopefully uplift someone who may struggle with the same issues that I do. I know I can't be the only one, and maybe by ripping open these (self-inflicted) wounds, I might help someone else deal with their pain, or their issues, without having to suffer quite as much as me. 
2. By confessing, by laying it all out there for everyone to see, maybe those issues would start to heal, since they had been acknowledged publicly, and resolution had been found on the page.
3. To practice my craft (writing) in a public forum, where that craft might actually do something, other than sit stagnant in my laptop and journals.

I think I have helped a person or two with my rambles. So, check on one. And my blogs are a great place for me to practice my nonfiction, work on voice and tone. All that good nerdy stuff. So check on three. But, the confessions themselves didn't work the magic I thought they might. I still struggle. I still hurt. I still want to go on and on and on about my problems, in the hope that, by going on and on and on, they'll go away.

I realize now, that's not the way this works.

As most of these blog ideas begin, I was talking to Vince in the car. I'm a very sensitive person, and I had (yet again) overreacted to the way he had said something, which resulted in fifteen minutes of us trying to get back to normal, because I was upset, so he was upset, so we were both upset...When things leveled out (because Vince was willing to not sit there and sulk, like I was, but instead tried to find a solution for us), he told me things he thought he should work on to make our relationship stronger. In turn, I asked him what he thought I should work on.

He said, "I think you need to work on loving yourself more, so that you realize that when I say I love you, I mean. You need to understand that you deserve love just as much as anybody else."

Simple, right? So simple that I had been ignoring the truth of this statement for a long, long time. Have I always known this in my head? Of course. I was raised knowing, thanks to my loving and wonderful parents, that I was loved. They taught me that they loved me, and that God loved me. He loved me enough to send his son to die for me, and for everyone else on the planet. He loved US so much that he died for us...shouldn't that be enough to make me feel loved? This was more than enough to make me feel loved in my head. Logically, I knew that I was loved. But in my heart, in my emotional core, I don't think I've ever really believed it.

This doesn't make sense.

I asked Vince, "How do I start loving myself?" I don't know how to love myself. And he reminded me of the basic truth of my life, the truth I have known logically, and emotionally, for as long as I can remember. Every time I try to do things on my own, try to fix my life along, I mess it up. But every time I turn to God, things turn around. Now, I don't want you to think that I mean, every time I turn to God for help, everything is fixed. Far from it. I mean, every time I turn to God, things are put in perspective for me, and that starts to turn them around.

We have each been fearfully and wonderfully made.

Whenever I start to doubt that I'm worth loving, whenever I find that I can't love myself, I can continuously go back to this truth. God made me who I am, the unique individual that I am. I am not a mistake. I am not broken beyond repair (we're all broken in some way, it's part of that uniqueness). I am not wrong. God made me, and I am worth loving. If I look at my husband, my parents, my brother, my friends, I can see that I am worth loving. And hopefully, if I keep looking without, instead of relying on my brain, it'll eventually sink in and become true emotionally, instead of just intellectually. I need to turn to God, instead of myself, and trust in his love, and the love from the people around me.