Being Lovable

A few months ago, I was meditating on the couch when I had an aha! moment. Thank you, Oprah, for that oh-so-appropriate term. I’ve always known that I am a people-pleaser, but on that day, I found a deeper truth. I have spent a lifetime feeling “not good enough” for love. In what felt like a trance, I slowly traced that feeling all the way back to my childhood in a brick house on a hill in rural Mississippi.

I don’t know if the idea that love had to be earned came from the people around me in my childhood, or if it was a scar from lifetimes past. I simply remember doing whatever I felt it took to be lovable.

I earned straight A’s in school. Learning came easy for me in the early years, probably because I had an older brother and sister to learn from and a mom who stayed home. I was at the top of my class every year, always the first to finish multiplication races, always the fastest reader. I don’t remember making any B’s in those early years. It just never seemed like an option.

My family was deeply involved in the Southern Baptist church, and boy, that is a book in itself. Not only was I active in the choir, I sang solos, much to the delight of the older ladies in the wooden pews. I was a champion Bible Driller. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Bible Drills, some old guy yells out a Bible verse and the first person to find it in their Bible and say it out loud wins. Yeah. Thrilling.

I won every science fair and spelling bee I entered. In fact, one year I decided not to enter the spelling bee because I was so terrified of losing. Watching from the bleachers, I was astounded to find out that the hardest word in that bee was “umbrella.” I was pissed.

I was asked to join the elementary cheerleading squad, and I came close. I attended all of the practices and learned the dances. However, the day of the tryouts, I backed out because I thought that shaking your ass (er, butt, er, rear end) wasn’t a very Christian thing to do. Of course, that made my folks proud and earned me another jewel in my imaginary crown.

While I was in junior high, my father remarried. What I remember most about his wife was that she had a typed list of rules and regulations for our household that a drill sergeant would find excessive. What I think made that list so terrifying for me is that it seemed to be dozens of opportunities for me to fail, ways to prove once and for all that I really wasn’t good enough.

Of course, what really sucked for me as the daughter of Christian parents was that in Christianity, nothing you do is good enough. You are reminded constantly that no matter what you do, you can never be a good person. You are a worthless sinner, and without “being saved,” you can’t experience God’s love.

So when I was around eleven, I was “saved.” I had no effing clue what that meant. I remember being in the pastor’s office with my mom, saying the sinner’s prayer, the whole time staring at my white Keds, thinking, god I hope this works.

Well, it didn’t. I became very active in a church while in junior high, mostly to escape my evil stepmother. Watching reenactments of Jesus being crucified and hearing about how long forever is when you’re in hell scared the crap out of me. I shook my dad awake in the middle of the night to tell him that I wasn’t really a Christian, so what was I supposed to do to get to heaven? A day later, I said the prayer again, this time with Dad at my side, in another pastor’s office. This time, I glared at a brass deer statue as the pastor asked me if I believed Jesus died for my sins. My answer? “I guess so.” Good enough, apparently.

I spent the following years going to church camps, rededicating my life to Jesus several times, and even attending a Southern Baptist high school. Do not get me started.

Not only was I being told that I wasn’t good enough, that this dude named Jesus was the only reason I was being spared an eternity in hell, and that everything I wanted in life was wrong, I began to really believe it. Why? Well, I couldn’t keep people in my life. They kept leaving. From the time I entered high school up until a couple of years ago, every single person I loved gave up on me. Family, friends, exes, everyone.

I am not going to detail those things here because there are two sides to every story, because I don’t want to play the victim, because I genuinely believe that they did what was right for them. Having had time to process it, I am beginning to see their side of the story, and I am starting to understand why they left. I get it. And it still hurts.

I know that the common denominator here is me, and this is my pattern. Everyone was simply playing their part. I know that I attracted the experiences of losing loved ones because I needed to learn from them. I needed to know who I’m not (not good enough) before learning Who I Am (more than enough).

I am finally learning my truth, that nothing I do will ever make me lovable. I am lovable being Who I Am, and that is the good and the bad, the failures and the accomplishments, the fear and the love, the shadow and the light.

On that day, in the midst of this flood of truths, I realized that as a young girl experiencing some of life’s toughest lessons, what I most needed to hear was that someone was proud of me, no matter what. Later that afternoon, I sent an instant message to Bob telling him that he better be damn proud of me, I had resisted a bowl of ice cream (we were both on diets). His simple response brought tears to my eyes and healing to the little girl still inside me- “I’ll always be proud of you, no matter what.” Thank you, Bob.