Sometimes life can feel like you’re at a carnival. You’ve waited in a long line for cotton candy, watching it swirl away in the hands of others ahead of you. Yet somehow, the spinner breaks, or the ingredients run out, as soon as it\u2019s your turn to enjoy. Regardless of your patience, or even the money in your hand ready to be willingly surrendered, you\u2019re denied a taste of life’s sweet rewards.<\/p>\n
In less symbolic terms, any one of us can be faithful, forgiving and flexible, and still end up with the empty-handed reality of rejection or pain. And when it happens at the hands of those you love, you can wonder if love is even for you.<\/p>\n
It happened to me. After years of wading (and waiting) through my husband\u2019s addictions and lies, I had to pack up the pieces of my life into boxes and bins. Feeling broken and lost, I left the home I\u2019d loved and labored in with my husband of 25 years.<\/p>\n
Of course, I wasn\u2019t the only one in the neighborhood whose marriage was crumbling\u2026but that was no solace. I still believed all my desperate spackling would make it last forever. Like the hopeful cotton candy customer, I\u2019d offered endurance and all my heart, but I got served betrayal.<\/p>\n
Not only did he leave me fighting for our marriage by myself \u2014 he left me all alone on moving day. He just went to work, as though it was a normal day. And on the darkest day of my life, I trekked back and forth to the back end of a truck in a haze of disbelief.<\/p>\n
Growing up through a dysfunctional childhood, self-condemnation fit easily into my baggage. And if this is you, too, you know there\u2019s always room for more. Especially if friends, boyfriends, girlfriends or spouses wind up wounding you as well.<\/p>\n
When we don\u2019t feel loved from the jump, we\u2019re an easy target for the author of lies. And whether it\u2019s the number of years you\u2019ve believed them or the number of loved ones who\u2019ve hurt you, pain can fool you into feeling utterly unloved.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the truth. You being unloved is the biggest lie of all. It\u2019s the one lie you need to unpack and never take with you.<\/p>\n
People will hurt you. They may even have affairs, or steal, or lie, or humiliate. It can happen anywhere. At home, on the job, in your small group \u2014 wherever you show up or share.<\/p>\n
But although we\u2019re all imperfect and capable of hurting each other, it\u2019s not within our power to define each other. So, if there\u2019s one thing you can own about your identity, it\u2019s this: You were created by God who is love, and therefore, you are loved.<\/p>\n
The most powerful way to defeat the lie of unlovability is to replace it with truth. A therapist I know and love suggests creating a growing collection of \u201ctruth cards\u201d on which you name and release your lies on one side, and then replace them with a truth from Scripture on the other. Hebrews reminds us:<\/p>\n
For\u00a0the word of God is living and\u00a0active,\u00a0sharper than any\u00a0two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and\u00a0discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n