why i feel loved...

If you knew me when I was younger maybe you would have wondered why I rebelled against the very idea of marriage, kids, staying home to be a mom. You would have likely looked at how I could hold a child in my arms and it would stop screaming. You would look at how the kids in the neighbourhood ran to me and jumped in my arms, giggling. You may have observed, as I got older, how my young cousins crawled up on my knee to read them a book, or how I chased them around the kitchen for hours playing game after game of hide and seek. You would have wondered why the very thought of that made me want to shutter, scream, and run as far away from it all as possible.

If you know me now you may wonder what changed.

Each day I observe people around me. The mother who takes her children to school. The father spending the day in town with his children. The couple walking hand in hand down the street. The older man grasping his wife's hand as he guides her across the street. Each day I observe these people and wonder when it will all be mine.

I think a lot has changed over the last couple of years. Some of the change was painful, some much needed and other aspects of change came quietly and as I look back I cannot pinpoint the moment when my thoughts, my heart grasped a new attitude, thought pattern or worldview.

Looking back I know now what was stopping me from dreaming about motherhood, being a wife...I didn't think I was worth it. Funny, my parents raised me to love myself, they loved me to death...and they taught me that God loved me too...And as I sit here and write these words I wonder what stopped me from accepting that. I guess I knew, yes, I was loved by those around me, but to an extent they had to love me. They were my parents, my family, my friends.

Then...I look at another aspect that was stopping me from wanting all of this. I grew up in a home where although there was not a lot of fighting there was tension. A tension that some days you could cut with a knife. I never wanted to voluntarily put myself into a situation like that...and because I didn't totally believe I was worth someone else choosing to love me.

That was until I really started to believe and accept the fact that God loved me. I was reading Psalm 116 and I just felt so loved...
2 Because he bends down to listen,

I will pray as long as I have breath!

How can we not feel loved. The God who created the universe, each and everything in it...bends down to hear my prayers.

That's just one example...but now, now I feel loved. The fact that now I want to get married, to have a marriage that glorifies God...that's actually a testament to God's love for me. That is just ONE way that revelation has been outworked in my life. Just one...