Am I Worthy of Love

This woman had been in great pain. To be alienated from yourself is also to be alienated from others:

•    “I really want to know who I am and have expressed many times to my therapist that I don’t feel human, but I’m not really understanding how to become a person. He hammers on how no matter who I am I am worthy of love. I am currently nothing/nobody so how can I be lovable? I really need some help with getting to know myself. Have any of you been offered any tools in therapy to help you understand who you are? In the last three years I’ve only learned who I am not.”

I can identify. Was I worthy of love, and what would make me worthy? Wouldn’t I have to hit the longest home run or become the school’s valedictorian?

I spend years thinking, “I just want to know who I am so that I can just be me and feel comfortable about me.” However, I was the last person I wanted to know. I didn’t like myself and was convinced that no one else did. Therefore, I tried to be like others, especially the popular ones. I studied their movements. Perhaps this might affect the way I felt about myself. However, I remained a loner.

Then I discovered that if I gave myself regular doses of positive affirmations I could better face the world. However, this contributed to further alienation. How could I possibly known myself and to accept myself if I am always lying to myself to boost my self-esteem.

My five highly recommended psychologists were unable to help. They just feed me with the same junk food I’d been consuming—positive affirmations. Despite this “rich” diet, I could no more engage and accept myself than I could fly like a bird.

I had to be assured that I was unconditionally and permanently loved, and that I had value. This would require me to abandon my unseen addiction to self-aggrandizing thinking which enabled me to get out of bed in the morning. Psychological counseling also robbed me of my dreams of achieving honor and glory. According to secular thinking, these entities were just the creation of my psychological needs.  Instead, life was just about finding happiness and meaning in a meaningless world.

I am now convinced that facing my addiction to narcissistic thinking was something that only Christ could do for me, but I had no idea of the painful and extended withdrawal I’d have to endure. My self-deceptions had to be incinerated. Consequently, I was stripped naked as my defenses were left in ashes. Panic filled the vacuum for the next several years.

In my vanity, I had previously survived by reassuring myself that I could make it through anything. I now knew otherwise. How could Christ love me if I barely could make it through to the next day! I was a failure, but He remained my only hope. If He wouldn’t rescue me, it was clear that I couldn’t.

However, He reassured me of His love through a series of miracles, which ceased more than 35 years ago. I can now say as the Prophet Habakkuk had written:

•    Habakkuk 3:17–19 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.

I now know who I am, but it is not who I had wanted to be. Instead, I know that I am a beloved child of God, convinced that since I have Jesus, I have everything I need. I can now dispense of my mask and bask securely in the light of His truth.