Insecurity and image validations

So I have decided today that I am horribly insecure. I know that comes as a shock to most of you ;)

Unfortunately I don’t have a cure for my insecurity, and maybe I am tired of trying to excuse it. It exists, I need to acknowledge its existence and continue acknowledging its existence.
I think love has a lot to do with needing people. We do need people, this is contrary to what I thought. I have tried to convince myself in the past, that God is all I need, nothing else. What? Where does that even come from? Pietism? I am not sure. But I think that is a load of lies. The Transcendent Reality has made us for community, for fellowship, and dare I say for love. I desperately need others, I need them to affirm my image, but I also have to remain open and hospitable to them.

The problem is I don’t know how to live in the tension of facing that need and giving into that need and demanding affirmation. How do I then exist? I desperately need to be affirmed in my image, but yet I cannot let that affirmation become my sole reason for living.

What does it then mean to be vulnerable? Too be naked and unashamed? And how can I be when I am fully aware of my need, and my longing for others to fill that need. I cannot demand, yet I must be affirmed? Currently I am struggling to rest in this tension. What does it mean to love?

Of course in the midst of my findings I stumble upon some encouraging words from Thomas Merton.

“We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us…The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world.“ - From Love and Living

So the question is wrong. Instead of looking at my image in the mirror and being convinced of all the things that I am doing wrong, my focus must shift to the external world. I am here now, I am not in outer space, and I love despite my insecurity. And I must continue to validate those relationships, acknowledge every humans image and therefore their significance, and I think through this the world can change. Will I still feel insecure yes….will that ever change, depends on the day. But I am called to love, and therefore acknowledge everyone else’s image.

As I learn to live in this tension
Please be patient with me

Love
Kim