you matter

That is a truth so many people need to experience, and yet I am in a place in life when I doubt it, and feel unable to give it--for myself, and for others.  But what more important thing does anyone need to experience than this...that they matter?  

Do I matter?

The question itself is at the heart of me; if it weren't, I wouldn't feel it touching everything I touch like it does-- with its enveloping sense of futility, reluctance to engage, separation.  Like a balloon I once held and then let go.  Like a plant trying to grow with no roots.  Do I matter?  Do my words matter?  Does my presence matter?  Do my actions matter?

The answer is "Yes," I know, but struggling to find the "why" often stalls me with such a sense of futility that I can't go on.  I can't reason it out.  Just that word "why" makes the entire assertion seem impotent.  But what if there is no reason?  What if that is the simple and absurd and unbelievable truth behind it all...that we're called to believe?

"He does not detect what is congenial in us and then respond to it; He does not respond at all.  He loves without motive. ... Experiencing God's love is not about an emotion.  It's about a conviction.  God loves you just as you are, not as you should be: without boundary, without caution, without breaking point, without regret.  Seize your belovedness."  

As this speaker, Dave Benedict, said in a really moving sermon, it's getting what we know about God in our minds down into our hearts, the center of our beings, that's the most important distance it can travel.  It's moving past the "why" to the simple belief.  It's not about proving; it's about accepting.  And then it's about saying "yes."  I will accept this mattering, and the dread that it causes in me.  I have to.