Do you like yourself? Do you believe that others can truly like you?
These two questions kept pounding in my head as our bus whipped around the curves of the mountain road we were venturing on through the night. Trying to think of anything else was impossible but I was doing everything I could to avoid facing those questions. Partly because they just involved too much inner reflection that I didn’t have the energy or mind capacity for then but mostly because I knew the answer.
Most of the time I don’t like myself.
And almost always I don’t believe that those around me can actually like me.
It’s so easy and simple for me to wrap my mind and heart around the truth that He likes me and that nothing I do can push Him away from pursuing me. That is so easy to hold on to because I know He is faithful and true. I can look back on countless times when I have done something or said words that should push Him away but He has never left me in those times.
It’s just me and people that I’m not sure about.
Before arriving in Laos we had a squad gathering in Thailand where we were asked the question: “What walls do you have up to those around you that are keeping them at a distance?”
All these questions with answers that I don’t want to face but whether I want to or not the answer was staring me in the face, unavoidably.
“you are not enough and you never will be”
There it was.
Starring at this wall, I kept thinking to myself, “well where do I even begin with that?!” I could see vividly in front of my eyes a wall that was by no means some little four foot wall you could climb over but it was towering high with thick exterior. The stone of this wall had crater holes knocked in it where there were some attempts at destructing it in the past but it still stood erected high. It all seemed to come back to that question: do you like yourself?
This month as we are entering into Unsung Heroes where we are literally praying for connections and to meet people in a city where otherwise we would know nothing and no one I have been hit with this challenge: to like myself and to believe that I am enough, always. In a month where I can’t lean on people from the outside to distract me, walk in the comforts of anything resembling home, find security in any performance based thing I could conjure up, or even openly speak in the streets about who I am – I will have to look inward and actually learn to like myself and to believe that that person is more than enough.
How does this look? What are my first steps you may ask? And that answer I do know: I don’t know but that is the beauty of exploring and digging deep, constantly allowing my eyes to be enlightened when He reveals things and my ears attentive to when He speaks.
I challenge you to ask yourself that very question I was prompted with: Do you like yourself? Do you believe others can like you?
Dive deep and seek the answer to that question. And if the answer is ‘no’ then ask Papa to reveal the beauty about YOU.
