Learning to Live Loved

What does it mean to live loved?

I have been working on this for the past two years. Papa has put me in a holding pattern and told me to “wait on Him.” Never having mastered the art of patience, this has been a difficult, but oh so subtle, lesson for me.

When I asked what I am to do in the waiting, I heard, “learn to live loved.”

I thought I knew what that meant, but the reality is, I didn’t. I still don’t.

I have been healed of so many childhood wounds, but every now and then, that orphan spirit pops its insidious head again into my thoughts. The old, ugly, wrong beliefs become fresh in my thoughts when I believed them to have been long buried. You know the ones:

            “You aren’t good enough”

            “Others can do this better than you.”

            “You will never be enough.”

            “God doesn’t really love you as much as he loves ______”(fill in the blank with

 twenty other names)

            “Your life doesn’t really matter”

            “You don’t deserve His gifts and favor”

You get the gist – blah, blah, blah….

So, I am finally letting go (after two years of knowing these next steps of learning to live loved).

I have been results driven all of my life. I was carefully taught from childhood that nothing is more important than achievements and reached goals—accomplishments that bring the accolades from others. This was the legacy handed down from my parents to my siblings and me. Only, I never could measure up. I watched my two brothers achieve and receive the praise I so desired. The deeply ingrained lesson was two-fold: praise was most important, and this was a prize for others, but always out of reach for me.

Getting to the core of the lie is necessary to be fully healed, so here it is:

There is nothing I can do to earn the unconditional love of the Father.

Any other thinking is based on lies. What this means is that no achievement, no milestone, no accomplishment on the face of the earth causes more favor. It has nothing to do with what I do to prove my worthiness. Only the blood of Jesus makes me worthy. Period, end of story.

2 Corinthians 6:2 tells us that now is the time of God’s favor, which is poured out on all of His children. I have a choice. I can walk in this truth or dismiss it through the wrong thinking embedded in childhood wounding. I can allow what God wrought through Jesus on the cross to heal the scars, or I can continue to strive.

Learning to live loved means to let go of striving and trying to prove my worth. That has already been taken care of through the shed blood of Christ. There is nothing more I can do. No more proof needed.

So, learning to live loved means letting go.

I think I’m finally beginning to get it.

A Ways to Go

The words slipped out before I could stop them. As soon as I heard myself, I knew I shouldn’t have spoken them. Yet, once again, my mouth spoke before I thought about the impact of what I was saying.

I am a public speaker, teachng parents and children how to not be victims of bullying. I teach about the energy in our words. I show compelling pictures that provide evidence of Proverbs 18:21 that tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. I prove that we were taught a lie when our mothers’ told us “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Words hurt. I know this.

And yet, I said them anyway.

The words that were not mine to say. But I had my reasons. See, I knew that the person I was telling could really help the one we were talking about. She didn’t know these things that I thought she should know.

Then it dawned on me. I am not the source of words of knowledge! It is not my job. Especially in this way. Gossip dressed up as caring concern.

We’re good at that! Using the guise of prayer requests to divulge information that is not ours to share. We say, out loud, how we want God to work in this other person’s life, and yet all the while having that finger pointing outward, three are pointing back at me.

There is a fine line between gossip and sharing with the body of Christ those things that are needed. This particular day, the line was quite a fuzzy one. But as soon as I said it, I could feel the spikes and shards of gossip on the edges of the words hanging in the air.

I know I am still a work in progress, but this sure is a tough area for me.

I repented right away, but after finding myself in this same place where I have been before does not feel good at all. I thought I was a quick learner.

Still have a ways to go!