Bound to Love©

     As I meander through the trails of the story I’ve lived under, something is changing. It’s amazing what grace can do when given the opportunity.  Things are softening in me amidst a world of harsh responses and hurt feelings. I’m learning to process more truth about me, which in turn is allowing generosity towards others to show up.  It’s not that things don’t hit me but more that their ability to stick around and plague my mind with shame is lessening.

     As I’m learning to deconstruct the things I’ve believed about myself I’m seeing things differently, I’m seeing people differently.  I’m finding a detachment from their actions having an ability to give or take my value.

     What I’ve discovered is that the greatest hindrance to being loved, has been me allowing the world and the people in it to dictate negative beliefs to me.  People have had an influence they were never meant to have and I’ve allowed it. Most of the time, I would wager, they are oblivious to what their actions are saying to me, about me.

     We watch other people’s actions and reactions and we speculate and most of the time we are dead wrong.  We sift these things through a faulty filter and it builds into a minefield of broken identity and pain.

     Many of us weren’t given much in the ways of how deeply we are loved apart from what we do or don’t do.  We start out in this world innocently and quickly get sucked into programs and grading systems that show us where we are lacking and where we need to improve.  It’s easy to get misinformed.  

         Love becomes measured, calculated and conditional and I don’t know about you, but I bought  into it.

     Everywhere I looked I was told to try harder to be better.  There was always something wrong with me, somewhere. It has been the greatest deception of my world.  

     I watch as my newborn grandson lays quietly in his bassinet.  He’s oblivious to the world around him, except for when he’s hungry.  He’s loved and cared for above his wildest imaginations. He doesn’t do one thing to gain it.  He’s just loved because he is.

     The voices of this world have not gotten to him.  People have not hurt him with their choices or actions.  He hasn’t made regretful life choices that he would go back and do over, if he could.  He’s fresh into this world, perfectly formed, perfectly loved.  

     It’s the truest picture of what life really is.  The one that we miss. Because the truest truth is that we are loved beyond our wildest imaginations, just because we are.

     The first step in recovering my real story has been coming to terms with that.  It all begins with somehow, accepting this profound love that brought me here in the first place.  

    That, is my starting point.  It’s what allows me the chance to stop and sift through the voices in my head that come bounding in through the actions of others.  Because the truth is, until I know I am loved by God, I will look to others to prove something good about me, to me, and they will fail.  It’s inevitable.

     When I look to performance, mine or others to tell me whether I’m worth loving, things will get all mixed up inside.  It’s not the way things were meant to be. Your story does not dictate my story. I’m starting to get that. It’s what dismantles the whole mess of shame that can tie me up in knots.

     When I react in a negative way towards you because of the shame in me, it’s my stuff, not yours.  It’s a game changer for relationships.

      Shame is the negative thoughts in my head that tell me something is wrong with me.  I’m not loved, valued, important, wanted, you get the idea. It’s the identity that’s formed through misconceptions and misinformation.  I buy into something negative about myself and that becomes the story. You do something that touches it and I turn against you. Because your actions are telling me that my worst fear is true.

     It’s all messed up. 

    Shame is the way of the world.  It speaks insecurities and devaluing thoughts to us.  When I believe it’s story it changes the way I relate.  When I stop to consider what I know to be true of myself I can let it all go and walk away holding my head up high.

     When I can look at what you do and not make it about me, opportunity arises.  What I’m finding is the only way that can happen is when I get my identity from where it was meant to be gotten.  

    There is only One who knows my true value.  The One who made me.

     A sculptor knows the value of the piece he sculpts, as does the potter and the artist.  They know the time, love and thought that go into each piece. They and they alone assign the value.  

     So it is with me.

     The course of my life is changing as I step into this new way of seeing.  My reality has always been what is true of my grandson. I am loved beyond my wildest imaginations and I don’t do one thing to make that happen.  I just am. No one’s actions or words can change that.

     It all starts with love, love that changes the world.  Love that sacrifices life to rescue broken people. To live free of shame is to live bound to love.              

©copyrighted: Julie H Todd 2019