some of my brokenness...

This week I have been helping a friend through a crisis in her life. Today as I was talking to her I teared up. I was telling her that her identity does not lie in that situation, that it in no way defines who she is. I told her that God knew she would face this one day and he still thought her valuable enough to send his son to die on a cross for her. I told her that this makes her no less valuable - to me or to God or to those that really love her. I cried because I was reminding myself of the same things. It was a reminder that I am not my mistakes, that I am deeply loved by lots of people despite them. That's something I seem to forget all too easily sometimes.

Last week I was hanging out with a friend that I had just met. It was Friday night and we'd had several conversations over the course of the week and he was leaving the next day. He told me, "I really admire you because you listen simply for the sake of listening and not to try to figure out what you're going to say next. That's so rare and I love it. At the beginning of this week when I met your friend Venessa I was interested in her. She's very attractive. But the more I talked to her, the more I realized that she had no substance to her. In the end, it's you that I have been so impressed by more and more every day this week. The more I talk to you the more I want to talk to you." I nodded and averted my eyes so that he wouldn't see them start to leak. And then he said, "I hope that doesn't offend you. I don't want to offend you." I shrugged it off and said something like, "No, not at all." But in my heart I was hurting. He was telling me that while I had substance, he didn't find me attractive even in a platonic way. (By the way, let me just add here that he wasn't someone that I was interested in romantically; he was just a friend, someone with whom I'd had some good conversations over the previous few days.) And he said that he was surprised by me, refreshed that he'd been able to spend so much time with someone that he didn't find attractive at all, and how much value he saw in me because I am such a good listener, etc...

All I really wanted to do was walk away but instead I listened to him, because after all that's who I am - a good listener. I let the lie sink in. I believed that I wasn't attractive, that I was only valuable because of who I am on the inside and not because I have external beauty to go with it. I am still thinking about it - almost a week later. And I think I am stuck on it. So much lately I have been frustrated that people don't look past external appearances to the person underneath. They don't look at people the way God sees them. "For man looks on the outward appearance, but Christ looks at the heart." Even though my friend said that he had found value in who I am inside, he negated it with the comments on my outward appearance. And he told me that he would call me Sunday or Monday when he got back home and that he hoped we would stay in touch. But he never called me; he's called my friend Venessa, the attractive one, a few times now. And this sent me another message: even if I do have substance, what good is it anyway? He still chose to pursue more of a romantic relationship with physical beauty instead of a friendship with inner beauty. I am broken right now. It seems I need someone to remind me of my worth, that my identity doesn't lie in outward appearances. You can tell me that all you want, but right now I am just really broken and I won't believe it. This is where I am.

Why do I seem to struggle with this issue so much?