“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen
I don't know about you, but I wish I could count the number of days I sit around thinking that I'm not good enough. I can't measure up to someone else. Everyone else has more to offer than me. I keep thinking, someone else is skinnier than me, someone else is prettier than me, someone else is funnier than me or more deserving of love than me. I reject myself and everything that God has made beautiful about me. I reject his divine image in me. And by listening to these lies that I speak over myself, I drop further and further away from the truth that God is desperately wanting me to hear. Recently, I have fallen in love with the word beloved. Or in simpler terms... BE-LOVED! This is such a radical concept for me. For as long as I have known my mental thought process is that I have to do things in order to be worthy of love because on my own I could never be worthy of love. I have believed the lies I have told myself, that I am not pretty enough or skinny enough or funny enough or good enough. So in order to feel even slightly adequate I have to do things to make up for the things I think I innately lack. I make people things, I drive people places, I listen to people knowing that they would never offer me the same support, I fill my time up doing things for other people and pouring my heart and soul into being good enough at ballet or academics. I have found that the more I do, the more worn out and burned out I feel. By my actions alone, I can never feel worthy of love, especially God's love.
So then I start thinking, great... so I really am unlovable. But, recently I have come to discover and believe a new truth about myself. As I am, I am worthy of love. Just by being, I am worthy of love. That's such a radical thing!!! Let's think about it... in every relationship we engage in on earth we give love to people because of what they do. If they make us mad or tick us off, we withhold love; but if we are happy with each other then we freely give our love. That's not the case with God. He gives us love freely whether we deserve it or not just because we are His. We are his beloved. And we are called to accept that, and BE-LOVED! We are automatically worthy of love and are unconditionally loved because of whose we are, not who we are. We are His!
And he wants us to stop running ourselves into the ground with all these things that we think we should be doing. Instead, he wants us to spend time simply being. Being the beloved. Being who we are and accepting not rejecting the divine image in each of us. And I've been trying to remember this recently... every time I start to reject myself and hate things about myself, I have to remember that I am hating the parts of me that God delights in. I may hate the way that I feel things so deeply, but God loves that about me and made that part specifically and uniquely for me. Once I learn to accept these parts of me that God so lovingly made for me, I can begin to rest in the fact that I am his beloved. I don't have to strive to be good enough, simply by being myself and living in my belovedness I can know that I am worthy of love.
