Different and Loved - Blog # 57

 Dear God,

Help me receive the words that You speak over my life. Help me to reject the identity I try to label myself with. Give me the heart to see that nothing outside of Your will happens to me: good, bad, sad, happy, confusing, or exciting. There’s wonder in walking with You. There’s fullness of joy.

Love,

Grace

Watered Down

In an effort to be someone loved, I find myself unrecognizable. I twist myself into a pretzel trying to make people happy -- and not only are they unimpressed, I’m left bent out of shape from the mold I’m forcing myself into. How long will I water myself down for the love and approval of other people? 

We have to ask ourselves questions beyond: Do they like me? Do they want to be with me? Do they want to hire me? Be my friend? Think I’m cool? Think I’m nice? 

What if they did like you and you weren’t you? Was it worth it? 

God made me someone spectacular! God made me a one of a kind original masterpiece. God made me in all my quirks, my silliness, my uniqueness, and my personality. To water myself down is to rob the world of what I could only do as myself. Not who I want to be. Not who other people would like me to be. 

Last week, I wrote about what belongs to me through Jesus. But what belongs to me can only be received by the real me. How can I receive what is personally designed and tailored for my life if I’m not living as myself?

Different and Loved

Sometimes I feel like different and loved are mortal enemies. If I want to be loved I have to be the same as everyone else. Dress the same. Look the same. Speak the same. If I stand out, I’m embarrassed. How can I be who I am, a unique individual, and still be loved? They seem like such incompatible concepts.

Yet, Jesus exemplifies what it means to be who He was: different. Who else was both fully God and fully man? Who else knew what it was like to be tempted by every imaginable sin but not overcome by it? Jesus was alone surrounded by thousands. Jesus was alone among the twelve disciples. That night at Gethsemane, sweating blood and about to be crowned with thorns, He was the only one who could die for our sins. No one else could comprehend the magnitude of what he was about to do. His closest friends were fast asleep at His darkest hour. 

I’m sure Mary knew Jesus was different. She didn’t have him by conventional means. I wonder if she watched Jesus grow, knowing that He was special, but a mother’s heart often longs more for their child’s safety more than anything else. I wonder if she wished Jesus was like any other little boy but He was the Messiah. He was born to die. He wasn’t the same as other children. He wasn’t only her son. 

To be different brings glory but it also brings suffering. 

“But I don’t want to suffer.” 

Suffering is never something we choose. It chooses us. It invades our lives. Now, we can choose if we suffer as ourselves, with God and with eternal hope, or if we suffer by ourselves, coping with whatever we have on hand and, on luck, expecting tomorrow to be better. 

Pretending that we’re put together doesn’t win us brownie points with God. It wins you the applause of everyone else hiding their pain because you look just like them. The only prize I get from pretending is loneliness. But being honest with my pain, even on this platform, hasn’t just won me healing. It has won the healing of so many people who are hurting. It has provided a platform for God’s comfort to be experienced. It has made a way for God’s glory to be revealed through the cracks of my life. 

Sometimes I wonder if it makes people uncomfortable to see me share my life or my faith. I ask myself. “God, is this okay? Maybe I should write more blogs about being happy and having joy and not my disappointments, my flaws, and my actual rocky walk with You. Maybe I should be more like everyone else.”

The truth is that whenever I reveal more of myself, there are people who run the other way. It’s not always open, welcoming arms that I’ve experienced. Unfriended. Unfollowed. Rejected. Whispered about. Strange looks. All my fears came true. 

Why can’t I just be nice and not talk about God?

Why can’t I just have a fun blog talking about my life and school without Jesus present?

But I love Jesus. He’s not just a Sunday morning routine for me. He’s the only one who came for me when I was lost. He’s the only one who saw me when I tried to hide. He’s the only one who suffered for the wrong that I did. He covered my debt with God. He gave me purpose. He gave me peace and hope. He gave me love, real love that didn’t depend on my performance or my behavior or my lovability, and I…can’t help but want to share. I feel my heart overflow. I see what God does through me. 

So, I’ll be uncomfortable no matter what I do. Even if I pretend, I’m just uncomfortable with no meaning or purpose. Even if I pretend, people will still leave actually and even if people like me it’s just a mirage. If I’m myself, at least if I’m uncomfortable for love. I’m uncomfortable for the winning of souls. If I’m loved it’s real and authentic. If I’m loved, it’s as me just as I am. 

I’m not valid because one person thinks so. I’m not invalid because another doesn’t. 

I will never be like anyone else, isn’t that good? We were made in the image of a one-of-a-kind God! God is different, and He isn’t only Loved but He exists as the very definition of love itself! God shows us that being different and being loved aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re actually one in the same. 

I hope that you are encouraged to know that who you are is someone God loves, celebrates, and cherishes. It’s not easy to believe that. I have trouble with being myself. I know my flaws. I keep count of my sins. I carry deep guilt and shame. But God doesn’t see me that way anymore. God doesn’t define me by what happened. What I did or didn’t do isn’t counted against me through Jesus. I can live loved by Love itself. That is the gift God has graced us all with: the ability to be different and loved.