I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately and felt compelled to write a blog on it. I almost feel like this topic is something that I would typically avoid, only because I’m only 17 and all the people older than me will just say that I have no experience or basis to write this on. Which might be true, but I am a teenage girl, so whether or not I’m an expert on the topic, (which I’m not) I still feel as if my thoughts count for something. And since this is my personal blog, I kind of just throw everything out there.
Pretty much every one of my blog posts revolves around love. And this one is no exception.
My best friend and I spend a lot of time discussing boys and marriage and the future. (Again, we’re teenage girls so that’s pretty normal.) And we both have this firm belief that God has a perfect guy picked out for us and in His timing, we’ll know who it is. Sometimes, I feel like for both of us, it’s pretty difficult to go through this “waiting” period. We have so many dreams of our weddings and having that special someone, etc. so we constantly have to remind each other daily that it WILL happen. And again, we’re only 17 so we understand that we’re young, but when you’re surrounded by music, movies, books, TV shows, family and friends that all revolve around romance and relationships, it gets kind of hard to accept that we might not have that for a long time. Nevertheless, our faith and trust is in God to provide that for us when the time is right.
Well, while having these conversations with each other, one common phrase gets thrown around a lot: “I’m scared of getting hurt.”
We both have this giant fear of meeting a guy, and then something happening to where we end up hurt or disappointed. And I have a strong feeling that we aren’t the only 2 girls that feel like this.
There are SO many times in my life where I’ve heard people say: “You have to love yourself or you’ll never be able to let someone else love you” and I’ve NEVER taken that to heart because I always felt like it was just conceited or an excuse for relationships that didn’t work. I never actually sat down and thought about how true this really was.
I have very little self confidence and I don’t believe I have much self-worth. Since I don’t see myself as having any worth, I don’t feel like other people do either. And this is so evident in so many areas of my life. It’s hard for me to make friends because I’m scared that people immediately look down on me when they meet me. I try hard to get my parents’ approval because I’m scared I’m not being good enough for them. But neither of these is true.
I project the way I view myself onto the way I think others view me. And I feel like this is one of the biggest issues in dating or in relationships in general.
If I am not happy with who I am and I feel like I don’t deserve to be loved, then that makes it very hard for me to believe that someone can actually care about me. I used to tell myself so often that I don’t deserve to be loved, so when I’m with a guy, I automatically assume that he thinks that too. Therefore, I believe that I’m going to get hurt. I scare myself into thinking that he’s going to leave me or cheat on me. I do this not only with guys, but with all of my friends and even family.
Because of the way I feel about myself, I create a lie for how I think people feel about me.
I think that the “waiting” period I am in right now is a time for not only self-discovery, but a time for us to learn to love ourselves.
I think I’ve finally realized that I have to learn to be content with the person I am. I have to learn to see myself the way that God sees me. He created me so special and He loves me so much and that has to become true for myself first before He brings someone else into my life.
I think that the fear of getting hurt emerges from the doubt that we have in ourselves. If I was confident in myself as a person, then I wouldn’t be as fearful of some guy hurting me.
I truly believe now that God specially created this time for being “single” so that we can open our eyes to the people He created us to be. And when we somewhat can see how special we are, then we can fully accept someone else seeing us that way.
It’s kind of like when people always say that a woman shouldn’t find her worth in a man. My future husband won’t define me and make me who I am, because God already did that. But he will compliment me as a person, as I will him.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
1 John 4:16
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:31
Mark 12:31 is such a well known verse that goes along so well with what I’m trying to say. Out of all the commandments in the bible, the greatest one tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. How can we love those around us if we have no love for ourselves?
Obviously, I’m not trying to become self-obsessed and put myself on a pedestal or tell anyone else to. I just believe that God created us to be so special. We were made in HIS image and He is perfect! In today’s world, I think it’s hard to feel confident in the people we are. A lot of times, I feel as if we’re not allowed to feel special or to feel loved. There’s so much negativity tearing down today’s generation that self-doubt is naturally built into our DNA. But it really shouldn’t be that way. We need to be able to find a balance in between the 2 extremes: 1. Hating ourselves (NO self confidence.) and 2. Viewing ourselves as the only human on earth. (Too much self confidence.)
There has to be a middle ground where we see and believe that God made us beautiful and amazing in His image and we deserve to be loved the way he loves us. And because of that love He has for us, we’re allowed to love ourselves, and freely give that love to those around as well.
Learning to love ourselves is step 1 in losing the fear of rejection.
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