When it comes to love, we were meant to shine. This is a message that most resonates with me right now. I see so much more clearly now, what this means to me today, and I am still striving to perfect this journey to discovering my own self-worth and truth. For many years I lived in such shame of who I really was, and  because of what others did in response to that part of me, I felt like I needed to hide it. I suppressed my loving and easily trusting traits as a result of so much negative reception. Although I suffered from early childhood abuse and negative affirmation, I was taught to give of myself and love with all my heart. I wore my heart on my sleeve. Showing affection to the people that I cared about (other than my immediate family whom I deeply distrusted) was so easy for me. Saying I love you, or I miss you, or I need you in my life, was a natural thing for me to do. Expressing my love for another human being was a joy because I deeply cared. After time I grew to hate that part of me though, because I keep getting denied the same love that I was showing and the feelings of rejection and betrayal became too much for me to handle. It was killing me inside. Needless to say I was loving all the wrong people and for all the wrong reasons. Because of all the family distrust and negative affirmation from childhood I twisted my gift of love with the need to be loved. Furthermore, I subconsciously sought out after unavailable people because that is what I became accustomed to growing up. My whole family was in some way or another emotionally unavailable to me. That set a standard in my mind of what love looked like without me having any ability to recognize what I was doing to myself. I was literally going crazy in my mind. I did not understand how people would reject my love for them. If it was me being shown this love I would have gladly accepted it as I felt such a burning desire for it. I began to feel like there was something wrong with me and combined with my feelings of worthlessness, which were already hidden inside of me from traumatic events that had happened early on, I taught myself how to turn off my emotions. I was so tired of hurting and longing and desiring this thing called love, which I no longer understood; that I told myself that there was no such thing as love in this world. Did it help me? Unfortunately no, it did not. All it did was allow me to hide behind my shadow self for fear of any pain or rejection. At the time I felt in control but in all actuality I was never in control. I was in fact spiraling further down in my quest for wholeness that ended in a life of sexual and other forms of exploitation, further damaging me to a point where I tried to take my own life. It was at that point where I grew courage to make a change and believe again in something so lost and foreign to me. Love. The answer was there all along, but it was neither my love nor the love of any other. It was my first love. Jesus. I had to go back to the place where my heart was opened to love to begin with. A real love. I called out to God and said show me what you see in me, for I see nothing of any value. I believe I said, help me with my unbelief. Sure enough He did. In a moment He showed me how He saw me. I saw myself (as though threw a mirror) as an extravagant gift to God Himself. Perfectly and wonderfully made to love and serve Him for His cause. He gave me the ability to forgive myself making me whole little by little. This realization opened me up to love again as I continued to pray for a broken heart for those hurting like myself. I prayed for His heart and His eyes to see how to love without needing it back in return, and, now my heart is full from His love in me. So now my secret (that I tried to hide) that I thought was so dark and dirty, is now my public life and I am free to give of it like never before. In a pure way now. Love is the greatest gift of all. His love. Free love. A love to make you shine again. A love to make us whole.

Marjorie Saylor

12/22/2015