Living Loved…
Pathways to Grace:
"We're loved into loving. That's ultimately how we're transformed." -Dr. Todd Hall
What if the truest thing about ourselves is not who we are but who we are loved by? What if we could love because we are already loved, not love to just receive love? What if we don't need to hustle, manipulate or control to be loved and valued, what if we actually just need to open our hands and receive it? What if the strategies we use to keep ourselves safe, get our needs met, be valued, etc are the very things that are isolating us from the love we desire, the love we are too afraid to even hope for? These are all questions I have been asking myself over these last few years especially. These are all questions that I thought I knew the answers to but my lived experience was telling another story. As humans, even though we can be wildly different and have completely different life experiences, viewpoints, lenses, narratives, belief systems; some things we will always have in common. We were wired for love and connection. We were wired for purpose and belonging and when we are not experiencing those things in our lived experience, parts of ourselves die. Hope dies and cynicism moves in. I truly believe that someone can seem to be the most successful person, but if they do not have thriving connection, purpose and hope, they will not flourish. I have spent a lot of time wrestling with these concepts myself. I believe I have deep connections in my life but I have struggled to live out my conviction/purpose because I still wrestled with believing I was loved and valued as a precursor to my productivity, not as a result. And this resulted in a gap that caused suffering between the internal conviction/desires and the lived out experience of my life. This gap created tension, frustration, anger and eventually resignation because it felt impossible to traverse. This is the common human experience for most of us, there is a gap between our desired self and actual self. There is a gap between what we say we believe and what we actually live out in our day to day lives. And there are days that gap feels like such an impossible chasm and we settle for so much less to ease the ache that it causes.
I understand that this may sound cheesy and cliché but what if the way to traverse that gap was the bridge of 'living loved'. This phrase has become a powerful tool in my life. It has become a reflection question I ask myself when I am taking an action OR an inaction (because I tend towards inaction much more often than action). I ask myself, if I truly believed that I am loved, that I am upheld by love then what decision would I make as a result? When I am walking into a room, how does that change my presence and demeanor? How does that affect the way that I show up if I am not walking into that room to BE loved but I am walking into that room confident that I already AM loved. It has become the undercurrent to many life decisions and a bridge I am building between my desired self and actual self.
I have shared this before but in 2022 my husband and I launched ourselves into the unknown. We had been praying for several years about my husband's job, for relief or release and it was a very long, difficult season. Then my husband had this dream that stuck with him, but most should know that by nature he is very logical, very cautious and Excel is one of his favorite things. We are not 'throw caution to the wind' kind of people. I LOVE my comfort. I love tea and blankets and the couch. I want nothing more than to be unaffected by the stressors of life. Yet, after much prayer and seeking wisdom, we had our answer of 'release' and a plan forward. But we went without knowing where we were going. I wrestled with God so much in the months before selling our house and moving to GA for the summer to stay with family where Jon would start the process of finding a new job. When we said yes to God, it was with the full knowledge that the outcomes were out of our hands. And with eyes wide open, we practiced the concept of "do it, scared”, in real time. Yet, when my soul was quieted, I felt peace. During that time, I received a word from a mentor coach that has defined these last few years and gave me something to hold fast to during a season of wilderness and uncertainty to follow. "She will emerge from the wilderness hand in hand with her beloved." I spent that summer on the back porch in GA. I had to learn how to put up emotional blinders (not my strong suit); I had to go deep into my relationship with God. I had to curl up onto His lap and dare to believe that He had goodness in mind for us, that He loved us more than I could even comprehend. And all the ways I wanted to desperately control our situation, manipulate the outcomes, I had no choice but to ultimately put it in His hands. A few days before we headed back to FL, still without a place to live, these were the verses God brought to mind and this is what I wrote in response.
"There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life - fear of death, fear of judgement, (fear of discomfort - I added that one) - is one not yet fully formed in love." -1 John 4:18 msg
"My life has been driven and defined by a lot of fear these last few years. It has been crippling at times and kept me trapped in things for a long time. The last year has been the uprooting of a lot of fear and has forced me to come face to face with so much I had been hiding from and forced me to move forward, despite feeling afraid. Right now we are displaced and do not know where we will live in a few weeks or where Jon will work. I still have to put myself out there as a coach and work to build my business. But as I sit with these verses and sit on the back porch in Canton that has been my safe refuge this summer, I realize that this whole process has been so much more about God freeing me from a life of fear. That He is building in me a deeper, attached formed love in Him that isn’t driven by fear. It's not actually about the destination but about attachment and Him putting together myself and my life, fully formed in His love."
I realize this is a lot to share but here we are in 2025 and our story is still unfolding, absolutely not tied up in a neat little bow. I have felt more acutely afraid these last few years than probably ever before but I have also experienced the deep, abiding, embodied love of God in a way I also probably never experienced before. I made a decision over a year ago, in a time when I was really struggling. I felt lost, confused and a little worthless and I just decided one day, I'm going to believe Him. I am going to believe that even though I have no idea what He's doing, I believe that I am loved, that He is for me and that all this is healing something in me, a deep core belief I held that I am loved for what I do and what I contribute. In that moment, my ability to contribute had been stripped away and I had to come face to face with what I actually believed not said I believed. I use the phrase 'wired for love not fear' a lot because fear is our default. But our design is to be loved. There will always be a gap between my desired self and my actual self, but the grace that I have experienced seems to be closing that gap, little by little and creating a freedom in my life that comes directly from choosing to live loved.
Helping others close this gap in their own lives, between desired self and actual self, said beliefs vs core beliefs and creating rhythms and practices to build their own bridge is the heartbeat of what I love to do. Anytime we challenge the way we have always done things, create space for reflection, choose to step out of our comfort zones and grow in our capacity, it can create momentum for real change in our lives. But if we neglect the truest longing of our hearts - to be loved, to belong, to connect, it can only take us so far. I started with this quote from Dr. Todd Hall because this has been the experience of my own life and I think it is the foundation for true transformation. "We're loved into loving. That's ultimately how we're transformed." For the first 40 years of my life, I tried shaming myself into change. Now, through God's grace, I want to love God and others well (and myself!) because I already know, in my core, that I am loved.
