BLOG in the Name of Love

So if you, my dear reader, have been living under a rock than you may not be aware that it is indeed the month of April; if that is the case, let me be the first to wish you a HAPPY APRIL! For those of you who are saying to yourself, “ummm duhhh Meagan everyone knows it’s April,” well did you know that for this glorious month, I, along with my fellow Squad Mates for The World Race, have been challenged to post one blog a week? Bet I got you there, and if you still knew that then please stop spying on me and hacking my emails… For those of you who have been following along on my World Race journey thus far, from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU! Thank you for your constant love, encouragement, support, and prayers. I truly couldn’t be doing this without you, and it  means so very much to me! So with 6 months to go until launch, 1/3 of my funds raised, and a newly accepted blog challenge on the horizon, without further ado let’s #BLOGITLIKEITSHOT. 

     Love. It is one of the most powerful forces known to man. It is simple, pure, and at the end of the day it comes as easy and as naturally as breathing. Why then, is it sometimes so difficult to accept love?

     I definitely consider myself a “people-person.” My entire life I’ve been a social butterfly, and have sought out opportunities to meet new people and make new friends. I often make it my goal to brighten another’s day with a laugh or a smile because it brings me exceeding and abundant joy to show others just how loved and valued they are. Loving others comes so easily, but accepting the love of others has always been something I’ve struggled with. 

     Stephen Chbosky, the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, wrote “we accept the love we think we deserve.” I think one of the reasons I struggled so long to accept others love was because I didn’t think I deserved it. I thought that to be worthy of love I had to do something to earn it. I had to be the perfect daughter to my parents because if I made them proud I would earn their love. I had to keep my friends laughing or else they wouldn’t love me, and would no longer want me around. I had to make all A’s and be diligently studious so that my teachers would think I was good enough, thus earning their love. I created a rigid outline for my life that I convinced myself if I was able to just check all of the boxes, then and only then would I deserve the love that others were so desperately trying to give me. I thought this would work, yet time and time again I felt that I still wasn’t doing enough to earn love. You see the problem was that I wasn’t accepting the love of the One who mattered most of all. I wasn’t accepting the love of the ONLY One who mattered, and therefore how could I accept being loved at all? I wasn’t accepting the love of my heavenly Father. 

     Someone recently asked me, “what do you see when you look in the mirror?”  I took a look and immediately my mind was plagued with all the flaws I saw. I couldn’t bring my mouth to form an answer, and instead allowed the enemy to veil my eyes in that moment and convince me yet again that I was unworthy of love. After what seemed like an eternity of staring at myself in the mirror and saying nothing, I was then asked “what do you think God sees when He looks at you?” Tears instantaneously began welling up in my eyes because I realized what I was seeing was a lie. 

     The God of the Universe, who crafted the stars, breathed life into nothingness, and is responsible for every good and perfect thing took a look at all that He had created and thought that the world needed me. Knowing all the mistakes I would make and all the sins I would commit, He still thought I was worth it. He thought that I was worth it so much so that He sent the only Son He had ever known to come to this Earth, bare the full weight, shame, and guilt of my sins so that I would be absolved, and gave me a way to be able to spend eternity with Him because He loves me. God. Loves. Me. Do I deserve it? Of course not, a love like that cannot be earned. The bottom line is I don’t have to do anything, be anything, or measure up to some invisible standard. All I, or any of us for that matter, have to do is accept the beautiful gift of God’s love. God fights and will continue to fight for me because He loves me. God goes before and behind me because He loves me. God formed and fashioned me before the beginning of time because He loves me.  

     I’m challenging myself from this day forward to remember that love is a beautifully simple thing. If I make my primary focus to love God and love people, everything else that I’ve over complicated my life with will begin to fade away. It’s no longer about right or wrong, what I should or shouldn’t do, or getting bogged down by the logistics of life. It’s all about love. If The Beatles had it right when they sang the lyrics “all you need is love,” and God is love, then God’s love is all you need! 

                                                                                                     Meagan Thompson