Instead of putting myself out there and flirting and getting to know a guy, I run away.

This is a post from The Good Women Project.  It is an incredible website, and if you've never checkeed it out, you really need to.  But anyway, I am posting this, because it seems to describe my life exactly.  Enjoy! 




"So there’s this boy…even writing those words gets me excited. Can you feel it too? The excitement you feel when you hear someone tell their love story, the story of how they found someone to love and be loved in return. So there’s this boy. And I like him. But before I go any further, I feel like I need to explain some things.


I have never met my real father and my stepfather is anything but fatherly. Safe to say, I’ve got some residual “daddy issues”. I’m familiar with defense mechanisms, finding ways to compartmentalize and ignore the heavy baggage I carry, from myself and others. When it comes to my heart, I keep it on lockdown, safely tucked away in a box somewhere so that I can control who and how much a person can access it. It’s a continuous battle to keep the doorways to accountability open in my relationships, willing myself to be brutally honest about the current state of my heart. In the last year or so, I’ve welcomed the fight more and more, finding immeasurable amounts of encouragement and support from the people the Lord has placed in my life.


But boys? Boys are another creature entirely. You see, I have never dated. Never had a boy call me up and ask me to that much desired dinner and movie. Never had a boy tell me I’m the most beautiful girl in the world. Never had a boy hold my hand on the way home and kiss me goodnight. So I don’t have the scars some girls carry from a really horrible breakup or relationship gone wrong. I have scars of an entirely different kind.


This is how my story usually plays out: Girl meets boy. Girl likes boy. Girl isn’t sure how boy feels. Girl wonders and hopes and thinks and then wonders a little more all while experiencing a range of emotions from giddiness to insecurity to jealousy to desire, all jumbling together until one bleeds into the next and she doesn’t know what she feels. Girl eventually realizes she’s not enough to catch his attention and gives up. And repeat.


But today I realized the lie in that story. 


Why the hell not? Why aren’t I enough?


I have let myself believe that I’m not worth his love, not worth his respect. And not only have I let myself believe that lie, I’ve come to expect it. Instead of putting myself out there and flirting and getting to know a guy, I run away. I run away because then I remain in control of the situation. I control whether or not I get hurt.


I fill my head with lies that eat away at my self-esteem, my confidence, the very things that make me me. Have you ever told yourself that you’re not pretty enough? That you’re not funny enough? Have you ever told yourself that he would never choose you when he could have so many others?


Because if you have, you need to stop. Stop right now.


You are pretty enough, funny enough, special enough. You are enough.


Psalm 139:14 says, “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”


The Lord, our Most High God, says you are are fearfully and wonderfully made. All of you. Every inch.


Who am I to say what He has made isn’t good enough?


I’ve burrowed myself deeper and deeper into a pit of doubt and insecurity, refusing to see me how God sees me. Refusing to see that I am worthy. And I am loved. I am respected and desired in every way I could possibly want or imagine by our glorious and perfect God. And that is so much more than what any guy can give me.


So I’m done with the comparisons and the expectations and the lies. I’m done with the running away. I don’t know what will happen with this boy, whether it’ll turn into something or just be one of those crushes, but I don’t really think that’s the point.


The point is that I’m enough.


You’re enough.


We’re enough."