You Love Me, for Me?

How can God accept me for me?


This is what I've been struggling with over the past month.  It started when I went on a date. The date was great - I had a wonderful time, the guy was nice, and we had a good time.  Naturally, I couldn't just enjoy the date for a date, I had to go and analyze all of my feelings.

Here's a question - does everyone do that, or is it just me? Basically I spend all my free time thinking about why I feel the way I do about certain things.

Why do I hate sitting in front rows?
Why don't I like to go anywhere new without a drink or something in my hand to hold on to?
Why does hugging people sometimes freak me out?

Maybe it's the crazy Psych major in me - but when I feel something strongly and it's sticking in my mind, I spend a lot of time analyzing and trying to trace the issue back to a source and solve it. Or at least spend some quality time thinking about it - usually in my Psychology of Personality class, where I spend an hour and half staring into space and blowing up my Twitter feed waiting for the end to come.

Anyway - back to the date. So it was good. Afterward (I talked about freaking out beforehand already, right? The last blog?) I started to freak out. Of course, to calm myself down I let myself just flip out all over and be anxious before beginning to trace what the source of the problem was.

I discovered two things. The first was this - the guy was really great. On paper, he had a lot of qualities I'm looking for, but in real life there just wasn't a whole lot of flow, you know? And knowing this, I knew that I did not want to actually date him or go on a second date because that would lead him on.   The second thing was that knowing someone was interested in getting to know me brought to light a whole bunch of insecurities and doubts I didn't even realize were lurking around!

The main thing I found was that I don't truly accept that God could love me completely. Because I know that love is sometimes conditional with some people, I get stuck trying to understand how God can love me for me. I dwell on all my mistakes and just don't understand why anyone would want to love me after all the things I've done - especially men. And God is the man I don't understand the most! I can read in the Bible, and I can tell my self that God loves me more than those stupid mistakes, more than an eating disorder or poor relationship choices, more than me being self-centered and judgmental and fake. And I can tell that to myself over and over and read and hear it again and again, but as soon as my mind and heart try to grasp and fully understand it, my brain just stops. I can't comprehend it.

Over Fall break I finally had time to think completely through all this stuff. Cliche as it may be (we all know by now how much I hate cliches, but so it goes) the drive home was one of those drives where the radio played all these songs that just seemed to be full of what I needed to hear. It was a really cathartic drive home - I cried, I screamed, I ranted and prayed and such. And it was really great. Wonderful. No residents to hear me, I could finally be loud enough to be totally honest with God and myself.

One song that really stuck out to me was this song I heard for the first time - Love Me, by JJ Heller. I still couldn't grasp the truth I'd been wrestling with, but this song just got to me. It still does. I can relate so completely to the chorus, because I honestly do not understand yet why any person, specifically a man, would want to know me for me - for all my past, all the pieces of my heart, the good and bad - and love me for those things. Despite all that.

Who will love me for me
Not for what I have done or what I will become
Who will love me for me
Cause nobody has shown me what love
What love really means

Why in the world would someone want to love me? I have to talk to God all the time about this these days, and it goes something like this -

"WHY in the world do you love me? I am none of those things in 1 Corinthians 13. I am supposed to be an example of You, Father God.   You are love, and that's what I should be striving to show in everything that I do. But I can't do it. I'm not patient, I'm not kind, I'm not slow to anger, none of those things. I fall short every time I even try, which seems to be never these days. So can you please, please tell me why You love me? Lord, I am not worth it. I haven't done anything that is worth love from you or anyone. I am a failure at everything I do, so why do You love me anyway? I don't understand."

As I said - been feeling a little insecure. Which is rather unsettling because until about a month ago, I was feeling pretty solid and very secure with myself. In fact, I blogged about how much fun I was having getting to know this cool person who was hiding out inside me. That's life for you, I guess.

So that's about where I'm at these days. Living it day by day, trying to make my focus less on me, more on Him. Some days it works, some days not so much.  Just keep trusting what God tells me, even if it's hard for me to believe and understand. 

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are about the earth,
so great is His love for those who fear Him;
as far as the East is from the West,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

Psalm 103:8-13

You Love Me for Me (Part 1)

Fall break has come and gone, and thank goodness that it came along when it did.  I got the first chance to go home and see my family that I've really had since the school year started. While home, I mowed the lawn. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I do my best thinking while mowing the lawn. It's a four to five hour job so there's not much else to do besides shiver and think. It was absolutely wonderful because this was the first time I'd had to think for longer than 15 minutes in the last month about anything.

The past three or four weeks I've been incredibly stressed out and feeling depressed, but I never made the time to thoroughly process through all the things on my heart making me feel that way. I know when it all started. I was feeling great for weeks - since school started, life was good, following Christ, looking good feeling good. And then it happened. This follows right along with my blog 'Love Like That.'

Like most stress in a woman's life - it started with a boy.

Naturally.

SO. What happened was - I went on a date. Actually, that wasn't when the stress started. The whole mess started three days before the date. This knot formed in my stomach and just ate away at me. I was super frustrated and anxious and crabby and I didn't. When the day of the date arrived, I was so freaked out over whatever was bothering me that I felt physically sick to my stomach. I woke up completely fixated on what I was going to wear on the stupid date which is ridiculous, because I spent most of my time with the guy I was going out with in my sweats. I went to I don't know how many stores looking for something to make my outfit perfect and assuage my fears. All I could think was - "If he doesn't like the way I look, he won't like me."

And as soon as I acknowledge that, I think I might have done a double take in the store. It was one of those moments you almost smack yourself in the forehead. A total 'what am I doing?' moment.  I left the mall. It was completely ridiculous that I was obsessing over this and I knew that. It was the weirdest thing because up until the point that I started basing my worth on what someone else thought of me, I was completely secure in who I was.

(To be continued.)