Found in Love

Hello all!  It is Monday morning and I am stirred to write, but my mind is a blank right now... weird.  The last several posts felt like they flew out of me.  This one feels different.  It has more depth, more weight.  But it is coming much slower.  It feels more intentional.  What I am about to share with you are the moments in which my life was completely turned around.  But it was such a personal experience for me, my fear is that it wont make much sense as you read it.  My hope is that it will some how resonate with something inside of you.  Especially if you are reading this and don't yet know your worth.  I didn't.  Let me bring some context to this.  Up until August 2016, I always felt worthless.  From what I can remember no one ever told me that to my face, I just felt that way.  I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.  I never really quite fit in with groups of friends in school or church.  I always had friends that I hung out with, but could never connect with anyone in a way it appeared they all connected.  I tried, but I was so uncomfortable with myself, so insecure, so I put up walls all around me.  Looking back I can see that even if anyone wanted to connect with me I wouldn't have let them.  I was so afraid of being rejected that I never let anyone in.  Never gave them the chance to truly know me, so they couldn't really reject me.  So I never really understood or experienced a real richness in relationships.  They were pretty shallow.  I was very much in control of how much I'd let someone see me.  There were times I would start to open up to someone who seemed safe, but as soon as I felt vulnerable and like I was going to loose my control of how they viewed me, I'd immediately close up again and push back.  It was an automatic self defense mechanism in me. It was strong.  And the more friends I lost, the stronger it got.  I just learned to live like this.  Truthfully I didn't really know what I was missing in relationships, because I never experienced anything other than this.  For years and years I'd watch people come in my life, then leave.  It was just what people did.  At some point in the last few years I came to the conclusion that this was what my relationships would look like - people come in to my life, take from me what they want or need, then when they have gotten all they can from me, leave.  Rejection.  That's all I was worth.  Clearly something was wrong with me.  Person after person, came, took, left.  Mostly women.  I was fully expecting my husband to do the same thing eventually.  I would even tell him that.  I figured eventually he would realize I'm not really loveable and leave me for someone else.  I now have tears running down my cheeks as I write this because I can't believe I lived in this mindset... and it makes me all the more grateful for the healing that's happened in my life.  Ok God, help translate this into something relatable... One Sunday last summer I was chatting with a couple of friends after church service.  A purse came up in conversation between the two of them.  One friend had given the friend this purse as a gift, but for some reason she didn't feel like it belonged to her.  She really wanted to love this purse, and thought she would, but she knew it wasn't hers.  She looked at me and said "The purse belongs to you, Marissa."  I was still in a funk at this time, just barely coming out of the fog I'd been in, and didn't really understand how a purse could belong to me.  But I know this friend, and when she says something like that, you believe her.  She told me she would bring it to me.  Many weeks passed and we didn't see each other.  During those weeks my heart was getting freed up.  Much of what I wrote in my last post "Seed of Hope" was happening, just to give you a timeline.  It was now August.  By this time a lot of healing had taken place.  I had faced my pain and baggage, and walked with God through a lot of it.  Joy was being restored in my heart.  I was feeling some freedom.  We were nearing the end of our sabbatical, and looking to the future with hope.  I was ready for something new.  You have to understand the timing of all of this was so God.  Had that purse been brought to me just a week or 2 before I wouldn't have gotten this.  My heart had to be ready to receive it and hear what God was going to speak to me through it.  There are some things I don't fully understand, but I do know this.  This was Gods perfect timing for me.  Ok, so at church one August morning, before service my friend walks in with a blue bag and handed it to me.  At first I didn't realize it was the purse because it was in a dust bag... I had no idea purses came with dust bags.  Listen, I don't buy expensive things for myself, ever.  I'm a bargain shopper.  I don't pay full price for much.  So my purses were always super cheap.  I certainly never paid enough for one to come in a dust bag.  She handed me the bag, and I closed up.  It was weird.  I felt vulnerable all the sudden and so out of place.  I didn't even open the dust bag.  Didn't even look inside to see what the purse looked like.  I didn't feel like I could.  I wasn't good enough for it.  I tucked it under my chair.  After service I went back to my other friend, who had originally purchased the purse, not the one who brought it to me.  I sat next to her and she asked me if I looked at the purse.  I said "nope".  She laughed, she knew me well.  She told me to go get it.  I brought it back and she began to share with me what God had been speaking to her about this purse.  I opened the dust bag and pulled it out, realizing in the moment how representative the purse in the dust bag was of me, and where I had been the last few months.  I was the one in the dust bag, being protected, kept, held, safe.  Now I had the purse out, holding it in my hands somehow knowing this purse was now representative of my life.  The purse was big, much bigger than anything I'd ever carried.  She explained to me that God told her I was an essentials person.  I only carry the essentials in my purse, just what I'm going to need.  So I could get away with a small purse.  And it was comfortable for me to hold something small.  But this purse was big, it had room for what I wanted to carry also.  I knew that meant my dreams... what I wanted in my life.  I had been such a doer for so long, focusing on the task at hand, and working to be super efficient so I would be able to get by with just the essentials.  I never took with me things I wanted, or ever expected to be able to carry any of that.  She went on to tell me the size of the purse represented the calling on my life, it was bigger than I imagined.  "Oh and by the way," she said, "I did not go to the sale rack to buy this.  It was not on clearance.  I paid full price.  And it wasn't cheap."  This was a designer purse.  Many of you might know the name, I didn't.  Dooney and Bourke.  This gift, a purse, represented the call on my life, allowed for my dreams and wants, not just the essentials, was bought and paid for - full price.  I knew she meant Jesus.  In that moment I felt uncomfortable.  I didn't know why, but I did.  There are more details about the purse - the color, the fabric, finding a random unused toothpick in it... I'm not going to share all of the significance of those things right now.  There was a lot.  Maybe another time.  But hopefully you see the significance of what was happening.  I was so uncomfortable, I felt exposed and vulnerable, and I needed to leave.  I put the purse back in the dust bag, found my family, and we left.  On the way home I was trying to explain everything to Chad.  I told him how I felt so uncomfortable with this big expensive purse.  I knew it was representative of Jesus paying full price with his life for mine, and I felt awful about that.  Why did I feel so guilty?  So unworthy of this gift?  We got home and had the after church lunch rush.  Every one was hungry and so I kicked into mom mode and made lunches.  But still with these thoughts running through my brain.  "God what's wrong with me?  Why am I this way?  Why do I feel so guilty about Jesus dying for me?  Why can't I accept that was for me too, not just everyone else?  I'm not worth it.  I'm just not good enough for that."  I was standing at our kitchen island at the end of the lunch rush, and as clear as I've ever heard God, He began speaking to my heart.  And suddenly something was exposed in me - a lie.  A lie I had been believing my whole life.  God showed me, and I knew.  It was really as if a veil was taken off of my eyes, and I saw it for the first time.  The word "just".  That was the lie.  I'm just a mom, just a wife, just a woman, just.... me.  Nothing special.  He began to show me that the lie I believed was I was "just not good enough."  Then he told me "No, you are.  Period.  Not you are 'just'.  You are."  I ran upstairs to where I had a notebook to write in.  And I wrote as God spoke to me.  "I Am" he said, "And because I Am, you are.  'Just' is a lie.  You are - chosen, my child, beautiful, valuable... The enemy lies and tells you that you are 'just'.  My truth says you are, and you are mine.  Time to step into the 'You Are' I've called you to be."  My knees hit the floor.  I wish I could explain with the best words the feeling that over took me... love.  My heart was open, free, and filling with love.  I now understood, not just in my head, but in my heart.  Now I had a choice, now that I knew.  I can continue to believe the lie that I'm "just" whatever, and keep trying to work and strive to earn love and approval, OR I can now choose to believe God's truth that says I am loved, He does approve of me.  I am who He wants... He wants me.  Not for what I can do for Him, or what I can do for anyone else.  Not for the good things I do, or how hard I work or how much I perform.  He wants me, because He loves me.  My worth is found in His love for me.  That's His truth.  I'm choosing truth.