{be, loved.}

I'm really grateful for those few close friends who know my soul and love me for it. Moving, and realizing in a very real sense that home, truly is where the heart is - has made me take a good look at the relationships in my life and what they mean to me. In Beth Moore's book she writes about how we so often dismiss truth spoken into our lives by other people - people God has strategically placed to remind us of our belovedness. We receive compliments as if they're pep talks or surface encouragement that is somehow invalidated because those people are only on the outside and don't see all the mess inside that we see everyday. We take their compliments as "kind" but we don't take them to heart. Learning to receive is a rare and wonderful quality. Receiving the goodness and the beauty other people see in us. Receiving grace without putting up excuses. Not being perfect, but being loved.

Also understanding that it's not in other people's words or thoughts that my belovedness is founded, only that through them my belovedness is often affirmed and revealed.

"When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to the other's capacity to receive, and you will be able to receive according to the other's capacity to give. You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it. You will be a free person, free to love." {Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love}

It's only when I love God more, that I can love others well.

And only when I let God love me more, that I will create room for others to love me well.