Brave Enough to Be Loved

This post was originally published on The Road to Brave.

Sometimes to love is easy, but to accept love is hard. 
~ Brent Weeks

The idea seems simultaneously ridiculous and so, so close to home. I guess that’s the age-old dance (or sometimes complicated battle) between mind and heart. It shouldn’t be hard to be loved, right? Loving is an active thing. Being loved is at least kind of passive. All it takes is accepting it. 

All it takes. 

Isn’t it funny that sometimes that simple act is so difficult? 

Yes, sometimes it takes a lot of bravery to love someone else. It takes selflessness and sacrifice and courage. But you know what else is often just as hard? 

Letting someone else love us. 

Maybe it’s a generational challenge. Maybe it’s a human one. Probably it’s both. At the end of the day, accepting love also means accepting the truth, and that is sometimes a hard thing to do. There’s another age-old battle between lies and truth, and it’s often easier to let lies root themselves deeper in our hearts and minds than to root them out. But genuinely accepting a genuine love forces us to reckon with those lies we’ve held onto. We can’t hold both simultaneously. 

Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is reach out and love someone. But other times, the bravest decision we can make is to let someone else love us. 

To let someone love us is to admit we’re worth being loved.
I used to think it was just me. I struggled with this idea of being “enough” — good enough, strong enough, pretty enough, smart enough. Obviously everyone else around me was much more enough, whatever that meant. Until I began listening to other young adults around me. To my utter surprise, one of the most consistent fears I heard was — guess? — not being enough. 

Turns out it’s not just me after all. 

When we truly let someone love us, by which I mean not internally or mentally resisting it, we have to admit that we are worth being loved. 

Caveat. I know humans are humans. I know sometimes humans fail in this. Humans don’t always love well. Sometimes humans treat others as if they’re worth nothing. That doesn’t diminish one iota of the rock-solid truth that we’re made in the image of God and He proved we were worth loving. But here, let’s look at the times when others do well at this — when they reach out and offer love to someone else, be it family, friend, or spouse. 

Even though feelings sometimes lie and say we aren’t lovable, we cannot fully accept love and simultaneously say, “I’m not worth being loved.” That’s resisting someone’s love. To let someone love me, I have to accept that they’re proving I am worth being loved. I have to let go of the thoughts that say otherwise. I have to choose to act on the truth, even when that act is accepting.

So letting someone love me is choosing to let go of the lie that I’m not enough, that I’m not lovable, that I have to somehow earn it. How can we not reject such a destructive lie? That’s brave, and it’s so, so important.

To let someone love us is to admit that we’re wanted as we are. 
I know this is in the same vein as the point above. But after talking to more young adults than I can count, I know this is something I’ve experienced but that isn’t remotely exclusive to me. 

To let someone love us isn’t to say that we’ve arrived at perfection, that there isn’t room to change. But it is to say, boldly and bravely, that we don’t have to be someone else in order to be loved. 

We do not have to be someone else in order to be loved. 

Christ proved this to us. And when people do this too, oh, what a beautiful way to live out the image of God.

I know that as humans, and maybe especially as young adults, it’s easy to feel (even though we know otherwise) that we need to be a certain way in order to be loved. I need to gain weight. I need to lose weight. I need to be better-read. I need to perform better at work. I need to be more outgoing. I need to be quieter. I need to — 

Again with the feeling vs. knowing. I know I’m wanted as I am, even as Christ is sanctifying and growing me. I’m happy to accept others as they are, today, knowing God is doing the same thing for them. But when I hold up a mirror, that’s a lot harder. 

What’s your need-to? I need to ___ in order to feel like I am wanted? 

What will it take to let that go? To accept that you need not ____ in order to be loved? You are wanted as you are. You are loved as you are. You are cherished as you are.

Letting someone love me is choosing to let go of the lie that I’m not wanted as I am, that I have to be somehow different to be loved. How can we not reject such a destructive lie? That’s brave, and it’s so, so important.

To let God love me is to accept that what He says about me is true. 
Isn’t this the root of it all? When humans do “love” right, they’re loving as Christ already has loved them. Has loved us. 

I know it’s so easy to let lies in about who we are and what we need to do — to feel and think one way, even if we know that’s not right. But if we accept we don’t have to (and can’t) earn Christ’s love, if we accept the truth that He declared us His own brothers and sisters, if we accept that He counted us worth His life, if we accept His love…then in action, in mind, in heart, in soul, we must also believe that all those things are true about us. 

If I internally resist that — if I act like I have to earn His love — if I let an undercurrent of thoughts run through my mind that tell me I am not good enough as His child…I’m simultaneously not resting in the love He has for me. I’m striving, I’m fighting, I’m doing anything but accepting. 

Being loved might be “passive” in the sense of receiving, but it certainly takes a great deal of action to break down our walls. To choose truth. To open the gates and accept the love of other people and especially the love of our Savior. That’s brave, and it’s so, so important.

Because when we truly accept the love Christ has, when we accept the love of others, we are accepting the truth — that yes, we are flawed and imperfect humans, but we are loved perfectly by a perfect God who is making us whole, and that we are loved as we are by another human who is similarly imperfect but also made in the image of that loving God and choosing to love us despite.

“Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss

This week, may we be brave enough to be loved.