People will do anything for it. Anything.

Something inside of us needs to know that we were created for something and that this something somehow is connected to someone that gives us great value. People try to find their value in so many different area’s. I work with teenagers… many have broken homes, bad family relationships, feel lonely… confused… hurt… angry… and sometimes even numb. I would venture to say that teenagers are not the only ones that feel like this… it just seems that they show it more openly than the “grown up” world.

In this giant web of feelings and emotions it seems people try to find something that makes it stop… not go numb but makes the sense of worthlessness morph into value… even if its only temporary. It only shows how meaningful value is to people and how much we need it. To know someone cares about us and if we get up in the morning… to know that there is something that makes us feel like we are smart, funny, accepted… fill in the blank. It only shows that we were created, made, designed, molded to need and crave someone to value us. It’s in our makeup, it’s in humanity… it’s people, bare and open with nothing else cluttering up who they are… it shows who we are and our dependency on the value we need.

Like I said earlier I’ve been seeing this concept more and more around me, in the people I know and do not know. I watch many teenagers give their entire heart and soul to someone else… usually called a boyfriend or girlfriend, in the search to feel valued. Now, if you are a teenager reading this blog… Do not shut me off… here me out. This is important, it matters I’m not anti boyfriend/girlfriend if it is right…

They get completely wrapped up and consumed by this other person. They think about them all the time, write songs for them, send them letters, myspace their love for them, announce to the entire world that “they are their everything, one true love, their purpose”. They open up their entire heart to them… all their feelings, hurts, time, failures, successes, and questions… They give this other person everything about them not knowing that when you lay down your everything you do not always get everything back when you pick it up… Sometimes you get less and sometimes you get back something entirely different than what was laid down. Time goes by and something happens that causes the relationship to fall apart and die. They are left hurt and bare with nothing else to offer anyone around them that feels new and fresh and valuable… so they pick up the pieces of their failed relationship and that’s who they become… they become the pieces of what they once were and they no longer feel as complete and whole as they once did… instead they struggle to fit together who they are and what their purpose is with all they have to work with… pieces. Pieces to a jigsaw puzzle of their life that they.. know… nothing… about. They are left with the hurt of trusting this other person with their value and being disappointed… let down.

The problem, the danger was not in having a boyfriend/girlfriend… it is in what they gave… everything. It’s dangerous to give another person all your emotions and love without knowing what they will do with it. It happens though because they need to feel valuable. Maybe their home life sucks, maybe they don’t feel beautiful, maybe they are just angry with not knowing who they are, who they were created to be, and life sucks on this side of the fence, to them, so they do whatever they can to find someone who will tell them, They Matter and are loved. And, when they find that person that tells them what they so desperately need to hear they are ready to fight the entire world to have it. In their eyes it’s this person they would fight so hard for but when you look at what’s underneath it’s really them fighting for what they do so desperately need… value and the sense of it they get from this other person. Not knowing that this other person needs value just as much as they do and neither of them are the source or understand enough about value to give it to the other in a means that is lastingly meaningful and eternal. So, this is why they give their everything to this other person because they are constantly trying to be a source of value to the other person and the only way they feel they can do this is by opening up themselves more and laying down more and giving more just to hear one another say I LOVE You and You are my everything… they.. you were not created… to be the source of value to another person… you were created to receive value and in turn be a conduit to show others the real source of love and value…

You were created to be loved and give love.

God made you because he felt in himself that he wanted someone to love and that would love him back. He made you out of himself when he breathed life into you. The scriptures refer to God as love… he is the source of it. God made you out of himself, which is love, so you could love him back. And in doing so you would find your value, your purpose and feel complete because you were doing what you were made to do… Loving God. There is so much more to this than what I can go into just here, perhaps another day.

So, where does this leave you if you are picking up the pieces of who you once were. Perhaps you have already laid down everything and learned the hard way that you do not always get everything back. Where does this leave you?

Like I said God made you to be loved and love him… this is where value comes from and this is where you can give your everything without fear. Even if your everything is already broken. Cause, when you lay down your everything you do not always get everything back when you pick it up… sometimes you get less and sometimes you get back something entirely different than what was laid down. When you lay down your life and everything to God what you get back is something entirely different than what you laid down… Since he is the one who made you… he knows which pieces do not belong to his picture of your life and he knows how the pieces fit together to make the beautiful picture that he originally intended. What you get back is restoration to life as you were created to be… Loved to give love… This is where you find value.

Now, may you find the pieces of your life are not the end, may you lay down your everything to this God who loves you for you, may you find your value not in someone else but in the beautiful picture God made you for, and may you find that when you lay down your everything, broken or not, you sometimes pick back up something that looks entirely different than what you laid down.

My fiance’ has this cat, that we so creatively named “lil kitty”, who is one of those pretty cats. Everything she does is pretty. She sits pretty, walks pretty, she is even a pretty cat!!!! To mess with her sometimes I will rub her hair toward her head… she doesn’t like that…. why I do it, I don’t know… but it is fun. I would have never considered myself a cat person but lil kitty has made me different. I really like that cat. The only thing that I don’t like is how much she sheds.

I am honestly surprised that lil kitty is not bald based on how much she sheds. We always keep lint rollers around so we can get the hair off of us after we play with lil kitty. Well, this day we did not have any lint rollers. We had used the last one and the replacements were in the car, which was not in town. I usually sit on the couch to work and lil kitty likes to jump up on my lap and work with me on my laptop. I’m usually ok with this because after I’m done I can go grab the handy dandy lint roller to get all the “pretty” cat hair off of me. I couldn’t do that on this day and of all the days lil kitty could pick it was this day that she was overly persistent that she wanted my attention.

She would jump up on me, and I would put her right back down on the floor. It didn’t seem to make sense to her, so she would jump right back up on me again. We went through this routine for a few minutes until it hit me… this was one of those God moments and I was about to miss it. I don’t want to be one of those cat lovers that is talking about their pet like it is their kid but this moment hit me.

Lil kitty wanted my attention desperately. I didn’t want her to get on me because she would shed hair all over me and I didn’t have anything to clean it off… but she still wanted my attention. She didn’t understand why I didn’t want her to sit with me like she always had.. she’s a cat.. she understands mouse toy and food. But this started to make me think about God and me. I know there have been so many times I have shed my junk on him… but he always welcomes me back. He evens tells me to caste my burdens on him…

God knows we shed a lot… but like the prodigal son He waits for us to come to him as we are. The thing I learned from this little cat was persistence. Jesus taught us to knock and keep on knocking, ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking and we will find what we need, the doors will be opened to us. God likes us to be persistent with him… not arrogant… but lovingly persistent in coming to him with our needs… just how we are. Max Lucado I think said it best when he wrote “God loves us exactly how we are but he is unwilling to leave us there.” I’m glad that God is not worried about having a lint roller to show his love to me. He took care of all that already, all he wants from me is persistence in coming to him.

It took a small cat to remind me about pursuing God.

So, what did I do in all this? I picked up lil kitty and we worked on the computer like we always do… except this time I did not have a lint roller. I had hair all over me, but that was ok…. Lint roller… I didn’t need no stinking link roller.