An Open Letter to Those Who Love Too Easily

So, you’re back to square one. You’re back to picking up the pieces of your heart after already having done so just months before. Maybe you reconnected with someone you thought had changed. Maybe you introduced a new face and it ended in… you guessed it, hurt. The very thing that leaves an all too familiar taste in your mouth.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a love-hate relationship with love itself. The concept of love seems to hate everything you are as a person, but you keep chasing and chasing love until you’re out of breath. Not just panting, but so worn that everything in the world surrounding you seems to fade like a scene out of a movie.

Isn’t it frustrating? When you give someone the access to your heart that you have kept under lock and key since your last breakup or your last upset and they break the key in half and throw it away. It is so debilitating when someone strolls into your life and reopens the scars that finally closed after months of healing. When they convince you that they are trustworthy, so you are ready to be vulnerable to love alas. Thus, you unbutton every guarded detail of your existence. You expose every reason of why you’ve been so hesitant to begin a new relationship. They reassure their ability to be a worthy confidante. You strip away every doubt and allow them to come inside of you, wrapping their hand around your heart. Then, it happens. They suffocate all of your willingness to love again, leaving your heart pulverized yet again. You feel the onset of guilt, you feel ashamed. You feel betrayed and used. They go back to their normal life, while you’re stuck with a nauseous feeling that seemingly won’t relent.

I believe that these encounters create rejection, which escalates to create something much more toxic – self- rejection. This is the vicious older brother of rejection itself. Because of this boy hurting you, you are now gazing into the mirror and contemplating why anyone would want to be anything more than friends with you. Even a mask of makeup doesn’t make you feel better about your value. But, please read this excerpt with care.

“Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that I had allowed to settle into the core of who I am. I talked about myself in way I would never let another person. Hints of self-rejection laced my thoughts and poisoned my words more than I’d like to admit.

Self-rejection paves the landing strip for the rejection of other to arrive and pull on up to the gates of our hearts. Think about why it hurts so much when other people say or do things that make you feel rejected. Isn’t it in part due to the fact they just voiced some vulnerability you’ve already berated yourself for? It hurts exponentially more when you’re kicked in an already bruised shin.

The line: I don’t want you becomes the label you aren’t accepted.

The label: You aren’t accepted becomes the lie you aren’t worthy.

The lie: You aren’t worthy becomes a script of self-rejection.

Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.”

Friends. Ladies. Princesses. Please do not let the actions of a boy keep you from the love of the man God has in store for you. You are beautiful. You are worthy.

“You are creative, and didactic, and absolutely essential to the plan of God. You are phenomenal. The enemy lied to you this morning when you were sitting in the mirror and putting all of this stuff on your face because somebody lied to you and told you that you aren’t pretty enough as is. Stop sitting in the mirror for 2 hours trying to fix what was never broken.

You’re beautiful because God made you that way. Stop hiding your scars.”

A boy of the world will ignore your scars and be ashamed of them, maybe even use them against you. A man of God will honor them, nurture them, and make sure you never have to experience them again.

This is a letter to those who love too easily. Don’t stop. The softest hearts make the best targets.

Don’t be mad at yourself for giving your love to the wrong people, they probably needed it most.

Inspired by Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst and He Who Finds A Wife by John Gray