Flashback to Thursday of last week. I’m eating a handful of pretzels while driving to school (because I haven’t had time to eat lunch) and I am late for an exam that I am woefully unprepared to take. I’m listening to my “Jesus music” station and I hear a song come on called Control by Tenth Avenue North. I haven’t ever heard it before, but I instantly fall in love. One of the lines is “the King of Heaven wants me.” And I just think wow! Here I am, hot mess, could probably use a shower, I’ve barely slept, I’m stressed out times 100 because of the aforementioned test. I haven’t been taking much time for God lately. BUT STILL—the King of Heaven wants me. He loves me, just exactly as I am. All the time, even when I am feeling less than the best version of myself. In fact, He loves me especially then. How cool is that?
As I am listening to the song, I am reminded of Ben Higgins. Does anyone else remember him from Kaitlyn Bristowe’s season of the Bachelorette? If you don’t, he was one of her final three contestants and he was extra endearing when he told Kaitlyn that he was worried he was “unlovable.” Something about that confession was not only super adorable, but also super relatable, and it has stuck with me ever since. There have been more than a few times where I have felt that same feeling Ben expressed—a fear of just being inherently unlovable. I have felt imperfect, deeply flawed, and just maybe like there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. I call it the Ben Higgins syndrome: the fear of being unlovable.
I think the fear associated with being unlovable, at least for me, is a fear of being truly vulnerable. I don’t often “let people in” and when I do, I still keep some walls up. I wonder if I ever truly let someone see the deepest parts of my heart or tell them the most hidden parts of my story, whether that would just be too much. Whether I would be found unlovable. I think that’s true for those of us who are introverted and our extroverted counterparts. I think it is a scary thing to confront in all types of relationships: family, friends, significant others. And I think it is something that lies at the heart of feeling unlovable.
The thing I realized about that is this: when we feel most unlovable, it is because we are unlovable to ourselves. It isn’t because we are unlovable to the people who are important in our lives—those people are going to love us no matter what. Society might not love us. The world might not love us. But guess what? It isn’t supposed to. We can feel secure knowing that we can be our true, honest, and vulnerable selves, if with no one other than Jesus. Because He will never, and I repeat NEVER, find us unlovable. He already knows us. He has known us since we were created in our mother’s belly. And… wait for it… He has loved us since then, too. There is no place we can go too dark, no thought too unkind we can express, no version of ourselves too unworthy, to present before God. He already fully knows us and already fully loves us. He’s just hanging out there, in our hearts, asking us to love ourselves and see ourselves as His beautiful children, and asking us to open ourselves up to being loved by others, too. He is the ultimate, be-all, end-all cure for the Ben Higgins syndrome.
So, the next time you are feeling down, feeling dark, feeling unworthy, feeling like a failure, feeling unlovable, remember this: God knows you and God loves you. He doesn’t care if you are barely keeping it together. He doesn’t care if you are shouting for joy from the rooftops. He doesn’t care because He is going to love you always, through all of it, and you are never, ever going to be “unlovable” because you are already so loved as a precious Child of God.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
all my love, ki
