To be loved

My life as a child was sometimes lonely and chaotic. I often felt unloved and unimportant. As I grew up, without realizing it, I had set my life's single goal to love and be loved by someone. When I met my to be husband at 20 years old, I decided that he was going to be that someone. Every decision I made from then until now focused on maintaining that goal, to love and be loved by him. If something I wanted to be or do threatened that relationship, I dropped it. To his credit, my husband understood his role in fulfilling this goal, and has been a man of integrity, kindness and faithfulness. As our lives together enlarged to contain children, friends, in-laws, the fruit of choosing to love and be loved is all around us. Resting in the comfort of this love drowns out all of the strident voices in the world wanting me to buy this, or do that, look younger or try harder. The voices create targets that are far away, hard to hit, full of disappointment. The target to love and be loved is all bullseye, there is no failure in it. It is God's plan for us, to love and be loved. As He loves, we love, as we are loved by Him, we are at peace.