I Don't Need to Be Chosen Anymore

Today I had a thought that caught me completely off guard.

It wasn't profound.

It wasn't theological.

It was almost embarrassingly simple.

I think I just wanted someone to choose me.

Not today.

Not this week.

Not even just in my marriage.

Maybe...

my whole life.

I started tracing that desire backwards and realized how far it goes.

Back to school.

Back to classrooms where I never seemed to fit.

Back to recess, where I watched friendships form around me while I stood just outside the circle, wondering what I was missing.

Back to wanting to be invited.

Wanted.

Included.

Liked.

I remember trying so hard to be good.

Good grades.

Good behavior.

Good intentions.

And somehow...

it still felt like I wasn't enough.

I carried that question into adulthood without realizing it.

Every rejection became evidence.

Every relationship became another chance to finally answer the question:

"Am I enough now?"

When I met my husband, I don't think I was just falling in love.

I think a little girl inside me whispered,

"Finally... someone chose us."

And for a while, I believed that choosing would heal everything that came before.

It didn't.

Because no human being can answer a question that belongs to the soul.

Not permanently.

The heartbreaking part is that I slowly began trying to earn what had already been given.

I edited myself.

I softened myself.

I became quieter.

Less reactive.

Less expressive.

I convinced myself that if I could just become easier to love...

he would stay.

Looking back now, it almost breaks my heart.

Not because I was foolish.

Because I was afraid.

Afraid that if I stopped earning love...

I would lose it.

And in the process...

I slowly lost myself instead.

Today, when I look in the mirror, I don't see a perfect woman.

I see someone who is still healing.

Someone who still gets tired.

Someone who sometimes eats too many sweets.

Someone who forgets to wash her hair because she's buried in another creative idea.

Someone who still cries sometimes.

Someone who still prays for a man who hurt her.

Someone wonderfully, imperfectly human.

And for the first time...

I don't feel disgust.

I feel tenderness.

Because she's trying.

She always has been.

She wasn't too much.

She wasn't too little.

She wasn't difficult.

She wasn't impossible to love.

She was simply handing her heart to people who couldn't carry it.

There's a difference.

Lately, something has been changing inside me.

It's subtle.

Almost impossible to explain.

When I think about the future, I no longer imagine someone arriving to finally complete the story.

I imagine myself continuing to live it.

If God brings another love into my life one day...

it will be a gift.

Not a rescue.

Because I am no longer waiting for someone to tell me that I matter.

I already belong.

Not because a man chose me.

Not because I finally became beautiful enough.

Not because I proved myself.

I belong because I was loved before I ever learned to ask the question.

Maybe that's what I've been searching for all along.

Not another person.

But the freedom of finally believing...

I was never unchosen by God.

And once that truth settles into a heart...

it changes everything.

💜