He Loves Me Anyway

I have been blessed throughout my life to know unconditional love. I first experienced unconditional love from my parents. It pains me to know that there are so many people out there (I've met some of them) who grew up in an environment where they felt that they constantly had to prove themselves, to earn every morsel of praise. My upbringing, in contrast, was one where love and acceptance were taken for granted. Even those many times when I was(and am) so far from lovable, my parents loved me anyway. They knew me and they loved me, just because I existed. It's an amazing gift that I hope, despite my many failings, I will pass on to my own children.

I also experience unconditional love from my husband. I cannot express fully the gift that this is and I have not always believed that he loves me unconditionally. But the longer we are married and the more opportunities I give him to love me less, the more he shows me that he, too, loves me anyway.

So, I've been trained, really, throughout my life to expect and accept unconditional love. But I haven't always trusted that God loves me unconditionally. For a long time, I didn't really think about God and His love at all - taking for granted yet again a love that comes to me without merit. Since I've returned to the practice of my faith, and with that return come face to face with my selfishness and my pride, it's been even harder at times to trust that God really loves me anyway. He knows that I've given Him plenty of reasons to just cut me off, wash His hands of me, and move on to a person with more potential. But He knows me, better than I know myself, and He really does love me anyway. Even with all of my experiences of unconditional love on a human level, I still find this so hard to take in sometimes. Yet I know it's true.

I often wonder, if it's so difficult for me to believe that God, in His perfection, can love me, in my imperfection, without my having to do anything to earn it, how much harder must it be for people who have not experienced unconditional love from parents and spouses and friends to believe it about themselves? Do they ever rest in the knowledge that this God, who created them from love and for love, loves them so completely that He will never cut them off, will never turn His back on them, will never give up on them? And how exhausting life must be for someone who never finds this rest.

So, no great wrap-up, no great insight, just a heartfelt thanks to my parents, my husband, and my Father for loving me anyway. And a plea that I will show this same unconditional love those He's put in my life.