Because I know what it feels like to be loved poorly. And because I know what it means to be loved by Christ.
There is something about experiencing a love that hurts you that changes the way you see people.
It changes the way you hear their words.
The way you notice their silence.
The way you recognize when someone is trying desperately to be understood but doesn't quite know how to explain themselves.
And I think one of the most beautiful things God has preserved in me, despite everything I've been through, is my overwhelming desire to love people deeply.
Not halfway.
Not conveniently.
Not only when they're easy to love.
But deeply. Intentionally. Genuinely.
Because I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that.
I know what it feels like to question whether you're too much.
To feel like your emotions are an inconvenience.
To have your heart misunderstood so many times that you eventually become afraid to show it.
I know what it's like to beg for understanding from someone who has already decided who you are.
To feel alone while standing right next to someone.
To wonder if maybe you're as difficult to love as you've been made to believe.
And I wouldn't wish that feeling on anyone.
But there's another reason I want to love people so deeply.
Because when I was struggling to believe I was worthy of love, Christ never stopped loving me.
And I don't ever want to forget what that means.
I think about how many times I've come before God completely undone.
Overwhelmed.
Emotional.
Confused.
Sometimes angry.
Sometimes questioning everything.
Sometimes not even knowing what to pray because I couldn't find the words to explain what was happening inside me.
And never once have I had to convince Him that my pain mattered.
Never once have I had to make myself more lovable before approaching Him.
He already knew.
He knew every thought I couldn't articulate.
Every tear I cried when nobody was watching.
Every moment I felt misunderstood.
Every time I questioned whether something was wrong with me because someone had made me feel that way.
And He loved me through all of it.
Not because I handled everything perfectly.
Not because I was always patient, gracious, or faithful.
But because His love has never depended on my ability to earn it.
And when I think about that, how could I not want to extend even a fraction of that love to other people?
I have been loved by a Savior who knows every broken part of me and still calls me His.
How could I experience that kind of grace and not want other people to know what it feels like?
I never want to be the reason someone questions their worth.
I know how deeply words can wound.
I know what it feels like to have your emotions dismissed.
To feel embarrassed for being vulnerable.
To walk away from a conversation wondering why you even bothered opening your mouth.
To have someone make a joke about something that has quietly been breaking your heart for years.
And because I know that pain, I want to be careful with the hearts God places in my life.
I want to be someone who listens a little longer.
Who offers reassurance without making someone feel needy for wanting it.
Who recognizes that behind someone's frustration might be a lifetime of feeling unheard.
Who remembers that the person standing in front of me has a story I may never fully understand.
I don't want someone to leave an interaction with me feeling smaller than they did before.
I don't want someone to regret trusting me with their vulnerability.
I don't want my words to become something they carry home and cry about later.
Not because I believe I can protect everyone from pain.
But because I know what it feels like to desperately need gentleness.
And because Christ has been so gentle with me.
There is a verse I keep coming back to.
"We love because he first loved us." — 1 John 4:19
Such a simple verse.
But I think it explains so much of what I want my life to look like.
I don't want to love people simply because they love me well.
I want to love because I have been loved by God.
I want my kindness to be an overflow of His kindness.
My patience to reflect His patience.
My compassion to point back to His compassion.
I want people to encounter something different in the way I care for them.
And if they ever wonder why I love the way I do, I hope the answer always leads back to Jesus.
My pain didn’t take away my capacity to love.
Sometimes I wonder why my heart is still so soft.
Why, after everything, I haven't become colder.
Why I still care so much.
Why I still have this desire to understand people, even when I have spent so much of my life feeling misunderstood.
And the more I heal, the more I realize that I don't think this softness is something I managed to preserve entirely on my own.
I think it's something God has been protecting in me.
Because there were seasons when bitterness would have made sense.
When shutting everyone out would have felt safer.
When deciding that people simply weren't worth the effort would have been easier than risking being hurt again.
But I don't want the way someone treated me to determine the way I treat the rest of the world.
I don't want someone else's inability to love me well to become my excuse for loving others poorly.
And more than anything, I don't want my pain to become louder than the love of Christ in my life.
Loving like Christ doesn’t mean allowing myself to be hurt again.
This is something God has been teaching me.
Because for a long time, I confused loving deeply with enduring everything.
I thought being a loving person meant always giving another chance.
Always extending more grace.
Always finding a way to understand someone else's behavior, even when it was hurting me.
I thought that if I could just love someone enough, eventually they would understand my heart.
Eventually they would be gentler with it.
Eventually they would love me the way I had been trying so desperately to love them.
But I am learning that Christlike love is not the same as self-abandonment.
Jesus loved people deeply, but He also spoke truth.
He recognized evil for what it was.
He did not confuse compassion with the absence of boundaries.
And I am learning that I can forgive someone without giving them continued access to hurt me.
I can pray for someone and still need distance from them.
I can recognize someone's brokenness without making it my responsibility to fix them.
I can love deeply without losing myself.
And perhaps one of the hardest parts of healing has been accepting that God never asked me to prove my love by allowing myself to be destroyed.
I hope that years from now, after more healing, more lessons, and more growth, I am still someone who loves deeply.
I hope I still notice the little things.
I hope I still get emotional when someone trusts me with their story.
I hope I still care enough to ask someone how they're really doing.
I hope I still feel compelled to make people feel loved, valued, and understood.
But I also hope I learn to extend that same tenderness to myself.
Because I am someone God loves, too.
The girl who spent years feeling like she was never enough is still His daughter.
The girl who cried herself to sleep wondering why she was so difficult to love was never difficult for Him to love.
The girl who kept trying to explain her heart to someone who refused to understand it has always been fully known by her Creator.
And the girl who has spent so much of her life trying to make sure everyone else feels loved deserves to rest in the knowledge that she is already deeply loved herself.
Not because she gives so much.
Not because she tries so hard.
Not because she always gets everything right.
But because she belongs to Christ.
And that is enough.
Let my love point back to Him.
I don't know everything God intends to do with my story.
I don't know why some of the things I've experienced had to become part of it.
And I certainly don't have every part of healing figured out.
But I do know this.
I don't want to emerge from everything I've survived with a heart that has forgotten how to love.
I want to emerge with a heart that knows where real love comes from.
I want to love people deeply because I know what it feels like not to be loved well.
But even more than that, I want to love people deeply because I know what it feels like to be loved perfectly by Christ.
I want to give grace because I have received grace.
I want to offer compassion because I have been met with compassion.
I want to be gentle with people's wounds because Jesus has been gentle with mine.
And I want the way I love to be a reflection of the One who has never stopped loving me.
I can't go back and change the moments when I desperately needed someone to be kind.
I can't undo the words that made me question my worth.
I can't erase the loneliness of being misunderstood by someone I wanted so badly to understand me.
But I can choose what I allow those experiences to produce in me.
And with God's help, I want them to produce tenderness.
Compassion.
Wisdom.
Grace.
A love that is genuine, but no longer without boundaries.
A heart that is soft, but rooted firmly in Christ.
Because if everything I've been through makes me more intentional about ensuring someone else never feels as unloved, unseen, or unworthy as I once did, then I want to use that tenderness for His glory.
I don't want people to walk away from knowing me thinking about how much I loved them.
I want them to walk away having caught even the smallest glimpse of how much Jesus loves them.
Because ultimately, that's the kind of love that changed my life.
And that's the kind of love I want my life to reflect.
Still healing. Still growing. Still learning to love like Jesus.
— Still We Grow