Loved Utterly and Completely

Today's Daily Reading is from Stasi's new book The Ladder of Love, available now — order your copy today!

Every child born into this world comes in with a question in their hearts. I came in with it. So did you. Girls do. Boys do. We all do. It is the deepest question of the universe, and it is simply, Do you love me? Or better said, Am I worthy of love?

We bring that question to our parents, primarily our fathers, and the way they answer that question in the myriad ways available to them helps to define who we are today. Sometimes more than we care to admit.

How was that question answered for you? What did you come to believe about yourself as a result? What do you believe makes a person loveable?

Often the way our questions were answered leads us to believe that we need to become someone better, someone smarter, someone funnier, someone more athletic, someone . . . else in order to be worthy of love. So we try. We try hard. And though sometimes the attempts work to get us the accolades and acceptance we were made for, they come at the price of sacrificing our true selves on the altar of belonging. We may receive the gaze we long for, but it is a counterfeit one as we are aware that we are living a lie, working incredibly hard to keep up the facade.

In pretending, we are not delighted in because of our unique selves. We are accepted because we have morphed into something deemed more desirable.

We can’t keep that up. We are in trouble.

Living a lie is not worth the price we pay, and the interest owed comes back to haunt us by way of self- loathing, addictions, and resentment.

We are meant to be loved simply because we exist. Our parents, even the best of parents, failed us and some desperately so. But there is One who loves us utterly and completely and fashioned us with intention and joy. Oh, to rest in the love of the Creator of the Cosmos. Because until we do, we will continue searching for it to fill the void of love that we all bear— and it will not go well for us.

Want more? Order your copy of The Ladder of Love today