I’ve caught the spring cleaning bug…unfortunately at the moment I’ve always actually caught some other bug so I don’t have the energy to do all that I planned to do today. L

But I did have enough energy to organize some shelves in my bedroom.  I found a journal from a while back and read through much of it.  I found something that I thought I’d share:

                Tonight I realized that I really don’t believe anyone REALLY loves me.  That’s a problem.  A big problem.  No wonder I struggle with anything negative that happens – I’m not at all secure in being loved.  I suppose that means I’m probably not that secure in God’s love either.  Everything…EVERYTHING…in my life speaks to the reality of that love and yet I question it?  What’s wrong with me?  Seriously.

                I can’t keep going back to the past to define myself – I’ve got to define myself by the present.  Is that right though?  The present?  Or is it more than that?  Defining myself as a Daughter of the King who is faithfully and constantly loved by Him.

                I know God’s love is completely unconditional.  But it has seemed like everyone else’s is so conditional.  Some of those feelings and fears are irrational…some are based in fact, but is it THE fact I want to base my life on?  No!  I want to base my life on the real and true fact that Jesus loves me without condition.  I’m lovable because He loves me. 

                Maybe I need to believe that better…that I’m lovable…that someone might possibly love me just for me…just as I am.  God has shown that to be true…He loves me just as I am.  That reminds me of that beautiful hymn…I used to sing it for my kids at bedtime.  Maybe I should start again. 

“Just as I am without a plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.  And that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come…I come.”  I bet I would love others better if I grasped how loved I truly am.

That was over a year ago and I believe that God has worked mightily in my life regarding this, but I still struggle at times.  Still want to be assured that I’m worth the whole “love you” thing.  I suppose it is kind of understandable based on my ex-husband’s actions, but certainly not a place I want to remain.  And I definitely think God doesn’t want me there either.  And probably everyone else in my life would prefer I leave this place as well.

When I think of love, one of the first verses that pops into my mind is:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Matthew 22:37-39

That’s a whole lot of lovin’!  Loving God, loving others, loving myself.  Isn’t it interesting that it sometimes is most difficult to love ourselves….to believe we are worth loving.

And love…it isn’t something I do because I feel like it.  I love because I choose to, because God made me to love.

When I found out about my husband’s adultery, I had to make a deliberate and crazy choice to love the man anyway.  I now understand choosing to love someone.  I know the sacrifice and challenges of that decision.  I believe in this case it was a God-honoring decision and He most definitely gave me the grace to do it.  Absolutely not in my own strength, but God’s!

The love I was able to offer my husband was because God’s love was spilling out of me.  I was not the source of it…it did not come from me.   I love because there is love in my life because I have Him.

After all, love is never apart from God.  How can it be when God is love?

…God is love, and whoever abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him.  1 John 4:16

So if I have God in my life…if I abide in Him and He abides in me…how can I not be lovable?  And loving.

It isn’t about how someone loves me or doesn’t love me…although that certainly can make me feel wonderfully great or tragically awful.  I have certainly felt both ends of the spectrum. But I know…

Love is about God.  It really is.

Any and all the love in the world is only because of God. And amazingly He is loving and gracious enough to offer that same love to us without condition.

God’s love is ours simply because He loves us.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.  Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.   Isaiah 43:3-4

 I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.   Again I will build you, and you shall be built.  Jeremiah 31:3

We are the objects of His affection.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  1 John 3:1

We are lovable because we are loved deeply by God.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  1 John 4:10

We are lovable because we were made to love and be loved.

We love because he first loved us.  1 John 4:19

We are lovable because God says so.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.  John 15:9

I believe God loves me…He has proven it.  How can I doubt my ability to be loved…lovable?

No matter what someone says or does to me that feeds my fear of being unlovable, God says nothing at all can separate me from His love.  Nothing.  That means nothing I do or say or think or have or don’t have, nothing anyone else does or thinks or says…nothing is going to impact the Father’s love for me.  It’s true.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

Some of us have been through a very difficult experience – and even that seems like an understatement.

Being betrayed and left by the one who promised to live life with you – the person who promised to love you no matter what life threw your way…that is a difficult thing to get over.  Things you never thought would change did.  The love you thought was a definite wasn’t…but God’s love stays the same because God stays the same.  He doesn’t ever stop loving and He doesn’t ever leave or forsake.  He will faithfully love us for eternity.

We can totally, completely, and confidently rest in the fact that we are loved.

We are indeed loveable.