On Being Deserving

You deserve all the greatness, beauty, love that I have in store for you. Hold this in your heart and know that it is true. I won’t let you settle for less because you deserve to have more. More than you will allow yourself to have if left up to your own devices.

I’ve wasted a lot of time being envious of others – those who are smarter, prettier, thinner, those who I think have better careers and better lives than me. I most envy the ones who unabashedly and unashamedly go through life seizing it by the horns. Grabbing that proverbial brass ring. Not only knowing exactly what they want, but utterly and completely believing that they’re worthy of it too. How dare they! I mean really. Who do they think they are?!

And yet…who do I think I’m not? Who do you think you’re not? When we don’t take time to connect with a Higher Power, it’s easy to forget not just who we are, but whose we are. It’s easy to judge ourselves mercilessly, to beat ourselves down until we’re just shadows of the magnificent beings that we were created to be.

Believing that I merit happiness, love and kindness has always been a challenge because I’m secretly convinced that I don’t deserve it. Admitting what I really want to anyone, let alone myself, makes me feel incredibly vulnerable and self-conscious. Who am I to think that I'm deserving? Does someone who’s done what I’ve done and thought what I’ve thought and failed as much as I've failed deserve any more than a mediocre life?

So instead I pretend that I don’t want what I want, let alone need what I need. I whittle down my dreams and desires, focus on just surviving, and settle for scraps instead. I let my unspoken dreams die on the vine. I pretend I don’t have any dreams, pretend that there’s nothing that I want. And then I wonder why I feel unfulfilled and unhappy with myself and my life. I wonder why I'm filled with such resentment towards others who seemingly "have it all," and I wonder why what I want the most never seems to manifest itself.

It’s a vicious cycle. One that is far too easy to get caught up in, far too easy to believe. But what we take as gospel truths are just stories that we’ve made up, lies that we’ve manufactured about ourselves, other people’s misplaced judgments that we hold to tightly and claim as our own.

The answer, the real truth about ourselves and whether we are deserving of our hearts’ desires can only be revealed through the lens of unconditional love. In the eyes of the Creator, who made us and loves us all exactly as we are, of course we are deserving. Each of us. Even me. Even you.