You Are Already Loved

Reading A Return To Love, this week I felt really deeply the truth, “You are already loved.”

I think back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine roughly five years ago. She and I chatted on AIM about our respective boy troubles and I remember this moment of profundity when I said to her, “I think our search for relationships is really our quest for the divine.” I realized actually what I sought was divine love, a spiritual communion, unconditional love from an infinite source. And I kept looking for it externally in the arms of someone else when it already existed within me.

I don’t think my friend agreed with me but it brings me back to my realization the other night. I’ve been going on and on for the past few months about loving the self, about looking in the mirror and saying, “I love you,” but I’ve been downplaying the love from my higher power. The love that is always around me, unconditional, ever present.

The other night I felt such grace because I knew, “I am already loved.” I am loved for who I am in this moment. I don’t need to “seek” it. I don’t need to try to find it or run from person to person to see if they’ll give it to me. I already have it. Unconditionally. Eternally. My higher power loves me no matter what I do. No matter what I say. No matter what I feel. I don’t need to be a “good girl” or ace all my tests or lose 10 pounds. I am already loved just as I am.

I think of that scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary when Colin Firth says to Renee Zellweger, “I like you very much just as you are.” Rehashing it with her friends later they say, “Just as you are? Not thinner? Not cleverer? Not with slightly bigger breasts and a slightly smaller nose?” Renee shakes her head, “No.” Her friends are dumbfounded.

I think her friends are so perplexed because in our society we’re given the message we need to change in order to be loved. We need to be thinner, cleverer, prettier, whatever. (And often the messages are conflicting.) Rarely are we told, “I love you just as you are.” (Because honestly, if we were why would we need to buy so many things?)

It’s comforting and provides such peace to know I am loved unconditionally, and not just by my mother. There is a force out there that loves me more than I can even comprehend. But I’m willing to try. I’m willing to tap into the well of love that’s ever present and really feel it as much as I can.

I dream of a world where we feel unconditionally loved all the time. A world where we know we are magnificent just as we are. A world where we love ourselves and each other no matter what. A world where we experience true peace and comfort and serenity knowing we love ourselves and God loves us too. A world where love trumps all else.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.