Daddy's Girl 101 Part 2: Love Cannot Be Earned....

 The more that I walk this Daddy's Girl journey, the more observations I find myself making about girls (or people, if you will) who are thriving in their Daddy-daughter relationships. 

This time I found myself harshly judging somebody for making a mistake that I deemed really fatal. I just could not wrap my head around the fact that somebody with a present father could let him down like that and then it hit me that actually, it was these people who have the privilege of being born into loving families with stable parental figures who made all these seemingly silly mistakes.

Why? If I had that kind of background. I told myself, I'd never do anything to jeopardize it. I'd show them that I was worth loving because I would never let them down.
This was my line of thinking and I was neck-deep into judging people I did not know enough about when it hit me! Of course they made mistakes! Life is about making mistakes, learning and growing from them, not about trying to walk this Imaginary line of perfection I had somehow drawn up. And of course their parents loved them even after the mistakes! Love is large and exceedingly forgiving, and it does not stop loving because you have failed to meet the mark. Therefore whatever it is I thought to be love in my head, the idea that love is earned through "good" actions or lost when you make a mistake was not love. I cannot tell you what it is but it is NOT love.

See, there are things that Daddy's girls automatically know and one of these is that the love of their father, is not for them to earn but is freely given. As an almost 26year old woman who has spent most of her life trying to earn back love to make up for where I thought I lost it, I can tell you for a fact it is tiring. I can also tell you for free that that none of the "good" deeds I have done for the past five years have earned me the safety, the security of the love that my heart truly longs for. I have held a boy's heart captive in my own hoping to squeeze out the little bit of love he had in it for me and still came up short. I have burnt myself out physically and emotionally for people only to search for it in their eyes and still found nothing. I've worked, toiled, loved, given, encouraged, forgiven and sacrificed my own well-being hoping that in the end even the tips of my tongue could taste a little bit of what love is and yet here I am. I still cannot tell you anything about love on this side of heaven except this: that the love of the Father is given freely, like a blank cheque.
I understand that perhaps my conception of love is what trips me up and leaves me empty. That maybe if I were to stop striving and working, I would know better what love is. I would realise to be loved you don't have to *do* you just have to *be*.
And as long as I am alive, I am loved. I was loved before I accepted his salvation, so much so that somebody was sent to suffer for me. I was loved before I was born, and plans were made for me to prosper me not to harm me. I am loved even when I make my worst mistakes, and a loving Father works in all things to make them work out for my good. These are truths that exist whether I choose to know them or not.

So as a Daddy's Girl who kinda arrived late to the party, I choose to accept this love the way one accepts a free gift. If the love of my Father is not for me to earn, then I will believe that I am loved before I go out and serve, encourage and or the other the other things that I feel are in my abilities. As for when I make mistakes, well, the kind of father I belong to is an overflowing well of grace for the daughter who is learning very late how to let him be a Father.

Love, Light

Siboe🤎