Affirm Me

When I was in high school I was applying to work at a camp.  A youth pastor filled out a recommendation for me.  I read it before he sent it.  He mentioned in it that I had a need to be affirmed.  While that was true, and still is, it was a recommendation and wasn't the place for a constructive criticism. 

Fast forward to now.  I am still incredibly insecure.  I need to be affirmed.  I need people to like me and approve of my choices. 

For example, I want people to like my house.  I recently posted about my kitchen and my new table and my desire to have a big girl house.  I bought a new table and a new chalkboard for my kitchen.  I was proud of my choices, yet I wanted people to see them and tell me how much they liked them. 

I invited my family over to our house after an evening at a restaurant the other day.  Everyone had somewhere else to go.  I told Ryan I was upset with them for not wanting to come over.  It wasn't that I wanted to spend more time with them (while that would have been fun).  It was that I wanted them to come over and see my new table and my new chalkboard and my freshly planted flowers and rave at how much they loved my choices.

To further obsess over these new choices, I posted a picture of my new chalkboard on Facebook.  I asked for honest opinions but really what I wanted was to be affirmed in the choice that I made.  I wanted to see the comments flow about how great of a piece it was.  My father in law posted that he didn't like it.  I was crushed.  I got defensive and fired off a comment back to him out of anger.  But he was just telling me his honest opinion...like I asked. 

So here I sit today.  Loving my house.  Loving my choices.  Loving my table.  Loving my chalkboard.  Yet I need people to tell me they love it too.  I wish I knew why.  I wish I knew how to be secure in my choices.

Really what it is all about is me wanting to be loved.  I'm not sure why I feel loved by words but I do.  And so now I'm resting on these words of love that our pastor shared with us the other day.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  1 John 4: 10

And I can be secure in that.