Dear You
Dear You.
I started a letter to myself because I knew it was what my heart needed.
I spent the week before in the whitespace of Colorado, hiking in the snow. It was there, in the openness of God’s creation, that I saw my soul stripped bare. You know, those moments when your heart bubbles up and exposes you to yourself? Those moments you see glimpses of your brokenness?
I knew God was asking me there…Forgive yourself.
I had gone through a season where I had acted out of fear instead of love, stepped back and hid rather than do the courageous thing and speak. And I saw the parts of myself that I don’t love. I saw myself as a 7 year old girl, who felt unseen and unworthy. I may be 28, but suddenly, I was her again.
And God asked me to love her, that little girl inside myself. And to stand up for her, give her a voice.
We all have little girls inside of ourselves that need to be seen and loved. Sometimes the world can’t love us, can’t fully embrace us – because of its own brokenness. And that’s when we need to embrace, we need to love, and we need to let God’s love in.
These are the places that are hardest to love ourselves, and the hardest to accept God’s love. The places where, if we’re really honest, we just don’t think we deserve it. The places we feel as if we’re 7 years old again.
It’s hard to admit that we’re ashamed of pieces of ourselves, and our story – but we are. I know I am. I’m ashamed of the places that make me feel weak and voiceless – when I’ve done so much work to grow strong and grow into the woman God’s made me to be.
But our places of shame, wherever they are, are precisely the cracks where God asks that we let His love and His light in.
He doesn’t want to love the put together pieces of us – the places we say, Here, God, I’m presenting you my best. I’m giving you my most buttoned up version of myself. Here’s the best that I can be. Love her.
His love says, I want to love the pieces you can’t love in yourself. Because that kind of love brings healing, girls. And healing is what our hearts need. It’s what God longs to give us.
I know this is a hard post today – it’s a hard post for me, too. To write to you about something that I struggle with. But these gaps – the gaps between where we are and where God is calling us to – this is the place His power dwells. This is the space where His love transforms us.
It’s easier for me to push myself to be perfect – than to accept myself in love.
It’s easier for me to be my own critic – say, “I’m disappointed you didn’t do better,” than to say, “You were doing the best that you could.”
It’s easier for me to hide when I make a mistake – than to confess it, forgive myself, and move on.
But we know God doesn’t call us to easy places. He doesn’t call us to easy love. Not easy love for others, and not easy love for ourselves.
Dear You.
Dear, beautiful, lovely, you.
Maybe it’s time that you, like me, sat down to write yourself a letter.
A letter of compassion, written with tenderness and understanding. To you. From you. And from God.
Dear You.
Let the words flow, let your heart pour out. Let God’s healing come.
Because this is the love that we need, this is the love that heals, this is the love that transforms everything, from the inside out. Brene Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection,
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”
It’s brave because there won’t be a line of people encouraging you to do this. Other people are struggling with their own stories. So it’s up to us to write our own permission slips. To give ourselves permission to extend self-compassion. And permission to let God’s light in.
When I wrote that letter, I saw what God sees when He looks at me. I saw what God thought of me in the depths of my story, in the unfinished messes. And I saw the way that God loves.
He loves wholly – not just in pieces.
He loves unconditionally – not dependent on the circumstance.
He loves sacrificially – giving all of Himself to all of us.
It’s hard to grasp the infinite love of God – and how He can accept and love us like that! This is why Paul wrote to the church in Ephesians 3:17-19:
“I pray that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
When we invite God into our depths with us, we see His love is deeper than we can imagine.
He comes into those places we struggle to love ourselves, and shows us that they do not make us any less worthy of being loved. They don’t make us any less strong, any less called, any less chosen by God.
This love leaves us speechless…it amazes us, saves us, and remakes us.
The whole of God chooses to embrace the whole of us.
We’re invited to embrace ourselves with Him. And to come to know the fullness of His love for us.
That love is singing over us…right here, right now.
So dear you,
Dear beloved, wonderful you,
Know you are loved just as you are. I take all of you. I embrace every facet. I know your whole story. Every burden, every tear, and every joy. And I love you higher, wider, and deeper, than you can ever know.
Love, God.
“I have loved you, My people, with an everlasting love.
With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”
-Jeremiah 31:3 (NLT)
“I’ve never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love!”
-Jeremiah 31:3 (MSG)
