I realize that a lot of you reading my blog may not know me very well, so I wanted to share with you my story – the story of how I started becoming the person I am today. The story of how God changed my miserable little life into something beautiful.
One of the reasons “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is such a raw read (and one of my personal favorites) is because Stephen Chbosky, through his many adolescent characters, captured the mentality of a lost and self-loathing human. “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
I didn’t think I deserved any love.
I felt worthlessness – it would be hard for a kid with learning difficulties and a crippling anxiety disorder not to. Starting from the age of 10, I couldn’t see myself for what I was and instead only saw what I was lacking. I didn’t feel “enough.” In my mind I wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough, athletic enough, good enough at life. I looked at the people around me and convinced myself that I would never measure up. Loving myself didn’t seem possible. And because I didn’t love myself, I didn’t think anyone else could either.
My mother would always tell me that God loved me and although this should have been a consoling fact, it wasn’t. It’s not that I disbelieved her. I knew that God loved me, but God loves everyone so of course he loved me. He HAD to love me – I was part of the “everyone.”
Because of this lie, I wasn’t able to connect with God on a personal level. How could I connect with someone I didn’t believe genuinely cared for me? By junior year of high school I was tired of trying and failing to build a relationship with God. So I began cutting Him out of my life. I stopped paying attention at church, I stopped trying to do morning devotionals, I even stopped praying. I figured going at it alone was better than feeling like I was failing in yet another area of my life.
When it came time to go to summer church camp, I was definitely going for my friends instead of God. To my dismay, my friends ditched me one day at camp and I was left alone with all my feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. I put everything into my friends so being forgotten was a crushing blow.
Hurt and confused, I sought out one of my youth group staff and proceeded to spill my teenage guts to her. After I was done, she said she wanted to pray with me. I thought she just wanted to pray FOR me, so I agreed. Although she did want to pray for me, she also wanted me to pray for myself. Out loud.
I had never prayed out loud for myself before, so for I while I was speechless with what could be described as a sort of stage fright. I also hadn’t prayed in a long time and I honestly didn’t know what to say to God. Eventually, words just started tumbling out of my mouth and I don’t remember anything that I said to Him except for this: “God, I’m sorry for ignoring you.”
And the craziest thing happened. I felt His presence for the first time in my life. And I knew that He had forgiven me, and crazier still, I knew that He loved me. He loved me and it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, achieved or didn’t achieve. He loved me no matter how I felt about myself. I mattered to Him. God loved ME so much that he let His son die for my sins (Romans 5:8). I don’t think I’ve cried so much in my life.
So that’s my love story – finding the love that God always had for me. And although accepting His love and His gift of salvation wasn’t a magical cure for all my insecurities, I was eventually able to learn to love myself and view myself as a child of God that He created for a reason.
“I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Psalm 139:14).
