Worthy of Love

In my quest to read 24 new books this year I’ve had to get somewhat creative with finding new books to read. I do not have the strength of Ideation so coming up with new ideas for what to read is difficult for me. Browsing through my Kindle library to get spark some ideas I happened upon a book I’d preordered when it seemed like a good idea and then hadn’t read when it’d been released- Altar Ego by Craig Groeschel.

The premise of this book is that we govern our lives according to the many labels and names we carry. Some of them are valid but since many of them were given to us by our fellow man they are faulty, mere lies that we come to believe so deeply they affect who we think we are. The aim of the book was to identify the wrong labels and figure out who God says we are. His labels are perfection, a guidebook of who He made us to be and, as Craig said many times, if you know what something is called then you’ll know what it’s for.

I’m on a recent Brene Brown kick, watching her TED Talks about vulnerability and, soon I hope, reading her book Daring Greatly. Today I watched her first TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”. In this talk Brene makes a couple of what may turn out to be life-changing assertions. She says, the only difference between the people she studied who were able to accept love and who had a feeling of worthiness and those who were always struggling for it was that the first set of people believed that they were inherently worthy of love and acceptance. It is truthfully as simple as that. And because of this inherent believe these people lived in a way that she called Wholehearted. They were able to be compassionate with others because they had learned to be compassionate with themselves. They were able to connect because they could let go of who they thought they should be and be who they truly were without the fear of being rejected. And since they weren’t constantly on the hunt of something to numb the feelings of inadequacy and shame, they were able to feel all the good emotions like joy and gratitude.

Okay, so follow me here- It seems like what we need to live as Wholehearted people is that inherent surety of our worth. The question remains, though, where does that surety come from? And, if we don’t have it, where do we get it from?

Well, who are you?

At your deepest, most fundamental core what is your name?

You dig down deep enough and you’ll find that your name and mine are the same. We are all of us made in the image and likeness of the most perfect and most holy God. He crafted us, decided on us when we could not decide on ourselves. No matter how disparate our experiences, you and I both share the fact that we did nothing to influence our conceptions. No matter what your parents tell you, that you were an accident or a mistake, you were decided upon by the truest embodiment of Father. You are, at your deepest level, worthy of love.

My hope is that if I keep telling myself this then I’ll be able to tell it to you at some point. Then you’ll tell it to someone else and they’ll pass it on and maybe we can actually come to a place where people can love each other, show compassion and connect in deep ways. We are a country of people living together alone and it is killing us. The data seems to say that in order to heal we must first be loved, believe that we are worthy of love.

We are worthy of love. It’s part of our DNA, part of our truest names. Now is the time to live like it, to live wholehearted lives in a broken-hearted world.