Inherently Loved

Should I address the one year absence I took from public journaling?
Or start adding my typed thoughts to the Collective Conversation once again, as if I never stopped?
Perhaps I will do both. 1) I will start again, right where I left off, feebly attempting to share thoughts and observations as I have them and, 2) I will begin with why I paused for a season.

Here is that story.

Once upon a time I started a little blog.  I loved it. Then I didn't. So I stopped...

I stopped because I started craving recognition.  I wanted to hear that what I was sharing mattered.  I wanted "Likes".  I wanted praise to boost my ego.  I wanted feedback that told me, "You are good."  I started seeking praise.  Oh, how that seeking started to suck.  Suck life.  Suck joy.  Suck heart and soul.

FACT: Human praise can lift for a fleeting moment but will leave you desperately wanting for more.  It is the proverbial hamster wheel.  Praise cannot fill us up.  People pleasing is like meth for the soul, you cannot get enough to be satisfied.

Don't mishear me, I am all about the positive affirmations, in fact it's my love language!  Encourage me in words and I will most definitely hear it and take it to heart.  I save greeting cards.  All. The. Cards.  My loved ones words to me?  They are my most precious treasures. However, this thing that was happening to me when I "blogged"- it was different. I was hoping to be glorified, not affirmed.  I was looking to be told I was good enough not simply be encouraged. There is a thin line baby.  Okay, actually, not really a thin line at all.  It is a huge chasm once you recognize the difference.

Isn't that how the enemy works though? He takes what is good (affirmation), and neatly twists it into something that kills (glory seeking).

Writing about my thoughts, ideas, stories and my life became a thing I was doing to gain love.  Not give it.  Writing brings me such joy when I am offering it up as an act of love and a piece of myself. As anyone who has ever had to read a birthday card I have written to them can attest, there is a direct correlation between the number of words I write and just how much I love you.  The fuller the card, the better.  But my motivations had somehow gotten tainted. It was so icky.  Icky to admit, but even ickier to pretend that it wasn't happening.  So I stopped writing, because there is certainly enough ick in this world without me knowingly adding to it.

When I stopped, I was left with reality.  The reality was I had secretly hoped that maybe writing would be my "thing." AND THAT IS GOOD, SO GOOD TO HAVE A DREAM!  It is so good to want a "thing." What isn't so good though, is letting ones worth be dependent upon ones actual accomplishment of a dream. It is so not good to use any accomplishment or activity (or size, or weight, or relationship status, or title, or boob size, or fill in the blank with whatever new thing the world tells us we should be or do) as a way to prove ourselves and our worth.

Mostly because using things or people to prove our worth will ensure that any failure or success will be wrongly interpreted.  Negative feedback and critique will be soul crushing.  Praise and positive feedback will grow pride. This is exactly what was happening to me every time I pressed "post" and shared something new.  I was begging inside, "Like me, like me, like me! PLEASE?!" Let me be honest, it wasn't just in a social media type setting where this was happening.  It was happening in my heart and all throughout my life.  I was looking for validation in all of the wrong places: in people.

Through some serious counseling and some prayer, refection and Bible seeking over the past year I can see more clearly where I went off track. I was looking to people when I should have been looking in the mirror and letting that mirror reflect what God sees when He looks at me.

So I looked, and what did I see that He sees? A daughter. His creation. His beloved. A princess, Cherished. Chosen. Redeemed. Unique. That list is just the start. My journal is filled with all He sees when He looks at me. I was reminded that I am loved.  My worth?  My enoughness?  It is built right into my DNA.  Right from conception:  I AM ENOUGH because I AM LOVED.  My very existence makes me enough.  Nothing I say, write, share, think, do, dream or accomplish will make me any more ENOUGH.  It is not possible. Not possible because I am already ENOUGH to the extreme.

Are you hearing this??? Let me save you some cash on therapy costs*, this is really, really, really GOOD NEWS.

And I think I am FINALLY getting it.  At least some of it.

This means I can write, share, dream, think, imagine... or do none of that (absolutely nothing!!) and still be loved. Regardless of any positive or negative feedback.  I don't need to do ANYTHING for ANYONE's approval.  Because approval from other humans is irrelevant when the Creator of the Universe and the Lover of my Soul and the Numberer of Hairs on my Head has already said, "Ang, YOU ARE COOL."

This means I can chill.  Chill with the seeking of others approval.  Chill with using others as my mirror for worth. I can get off the flaming hamster wheel of death.

Instead, I can get on in freedom and joy and peace doing the thing that I was created to do:  be me.

Oh, and write.  Because I really, really, really like doing that. So here is where I will pick up, right where I left off.  Except this time, I write as pure gift.  As an expression of who I am, free of wanting anything in return.  See, this time I am certain already that I am enough.



*I was kidding.  Some of my favorite people are therapists.  I totally think we should all go see them.  Pay them all the monies.  They are the best.