I have been thinking
about this for the past few weeks. About our inability as human beings to tell
the people we love that we do love them.
It shouldn’t be hard
at all, after all they are the people we love and cherish and care to be
around.
We don’t realize the
consequences in the long run of expecting that those we love KNOW that we love
them.
It took me a long time
to be able to express my feelings, living your life with your heart on your
sleeve is a dangerous thing. It can be awesome or it can be the most mortifying
experience in the world.
That fear of not being
accepted, loved back, cared for can really make one be careful with sharing
what goes on inside.
But isn’t that being a
little selfish? What about how others feel because of our fear of rejection?
I remember being very
small and desperately wanting that my dad would say he loved me, it took him 20
years to say it and now those 3 little words ,really are just 3 little words.
At first I did
everything you could possibly think of to hear them and then as time went by
and we became more like strangers than father and daughter I just let them go.
I still looked for
that acceptance, that care, that love in other places, in other people, but
they were merely substitutions of what I was really lacking as deep as my soul.
As substitutions they
never really quite filled that empty place, but they taught me other things,
especially that I am worth it and that I deserve that kind of love.
At first when I
started learning about God and about all that God is, the fact that He is Love
was what brought me closer to Him, at the same time I kept sending God the
Father away in fear He too would reject me.
I had found and
earthly suited substitution and I must say I was always more afraid of losing
that substitution than losing God the Father.
I know how it sounds
and I know the reaction it provokes, yet that was exactly how I felt, but as I
was thinking about the power of I love you I realized there was something in
common between that power, God the Love and God the Father.
They all were entwined
(like so many things), and they were
there and i tis my job to go and let my own tiny soul be also a part of that.
God is constantly
telling His people they are loved, letting them know they are cared for,
accepted.
If I am able to accept
God’s love, why can’t I accept that He is also my dad?
I really can’t yet
answer that question, but I can say that I want to be able to share my “I love
you’s” in that same truthful, honest and selfless way.
Words can be just
words, or they can have the power to build up or tear down people and more
times than others it is the words we don’t say that are really important.
I know two things I
want my words to always build up, my friends, my family, my husband and my children,
especially my children so they never feel that emptiness, that inadequacy of
not belonging, of not being worthy of their mother’s love.
I don’t know how well
I do all the time and I know I have a lot
of learning to do still.
But as I was thinking about
this, this past two weeks , my heart was broken with all the sad stories I have
heard about people who didn’t say their I love you’s and how they damaged the
people who never heard them and the one who never said them and I related and I
had this need of talking about this.
This need of putting
on paper what was wrong with my soul so now I can say that after this splashing
of feelings on paper “ I tis well with my soul”.