I grew up in the Midwest on a farm.
My family consisted of mom and dad and my brother and me.
I was the oldest, born to a mom who liked to over achieve.
She really was and is a remarkable woman.
The problem was that I felt more and more pressure as I grew up to be more than I could be.
Somewhere I got it in my head that I was loved more when I did good things.
People noticed me.
Strangers commented that they had heard of me.
It helped (and hurt) that I lived in a small town environment where everybody knew everybody.
My parents were big time farmers in the area, so everybody knew me before I knew them from my parents.
I felt all through my growing up years that I was supposed to be superior, that the baseline was well above average.
If I was going to reach it and get the accolades I wanted, I was going to have to really excel.
So I did.
I was the team captain and the star athlete and the shining example (sometimes) of what I thought everybody wanted me to be.
I liked the attention I got, and I really was pretty good at a lot of things.
I got noticed a lot, and liked it.
The problem came as I got older, because somewhere I learned that I needed to excel to be loved.
Being loved just for who I was remained a concept foreign to me.
I could only attach being loved to performing well.
So I pushed to perform well.
All the time.
I thought it was the only option I had.
When I became a Christian, I set a goal for myself the first week after I decided to follow Jesus; I wanted to be the best Christian that ever lived.
And I set my mind to it and worked hard for it.
See anything wrong with this picture? It had become so entrenched in my having to perform for attention and love that I was going about having a relationship with God the same way.
I knew that God loved me, but I figured I was going to get more loved or loved longer if I was really a great Christian.
I worked many years as a believer to bank up hours so that I would get loved when I wasn't so lovable.
Taking in the undeniable fact that I am completely loved - end of sentence- has been really hard.
I can get my mind around being loved if I have earned it.
But to accept it just because? That one blows my mind.
I really am in the midst of it right now - learning to know I am loved, and to live from that 'knowing' has been the simplest and most difficult lesson of my Christian walk in the 25 years I have known Him.
I am humiliated to say that I still find it far easier to work out my salvation than it is to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am loved.
I'm working on it.
I wonder if I work harder if I can get God to love me more.
I am trying to see myself through God's eyes, not my own.
I look different through that lens.
I know in my head that He made me.
Now I am trying to let my heart know.
I realize that I am unique, just as I am, without doing anything.
That one is a little hard to swallow, because when I reflect on my life there is a lot there that ain't real pretty.
Choosing to believe that he knows all the junk and all the gifts and loves me profoundly anyway - well, that's absolutely mind blowing.
I am finding in the middle of the struggle that when I begin to know, even on the shallowest of levels, that He really loves me, it leaves me a little better off.
I find it easier to love myself, to forgive others, to overlook insignificant things, and to live in a grace that can literally move the world.
I am beginning to know I am loved, not because of anything I have done or could do, but simply because I am loved - His choice, not mine.
So I am learning to live without performance, and rest in His unlimited offer of love regardless; regardless of the points I work to gain; regardless of the sin that still stinks up my life; regardless of the thousands of ways I think I should be eliminated.
I am learning to let God be God, and stop telling him how to do his job.