Love me a little louder

I saw a meme on Facebook today.

It said "you need to love me a little louder today"

Sometimes, when you hate yourself. When you cannot think of any nice thing about you. When you cannot find a single lovable thing about you. You need to be told.

Of course, others love isn't going to fix your self esteem in the long term. Good therapy will eventually, slowly, restore faith in yourself, or give it for the first time. That is very important. Long term change and improvement will come from knowing yourself and being comfortable with who you are and that you have an intrinsic worth not based on other's opinion.

However, this doesn't happen overnight. It takes months, years even. A little "loud" love might just be enough of a plaster to stop somebody bleeding out. To do this work, the person needs to be alive and have enough hope that love is possible.

If someone breaks a leg, for a while they need driving around. It's not forever. Time, treatment in the form of a cast, maybe surgery, physiotherapy to improve recovery will all mean that after a while the person is able to get around themselves. We certainly wouldn't say "well you need to get around yourself. I can't do it for you".

If someone suffers from crippling low self worth, it's not good enough to say "you have to learn to love yourself". It's true. We do need to learn that. We are broken so for a time, whilst we rest and recover and have our treatment and therapy, as with a broken leg, you might need to do a bit of the driving. You may need to do the loving for me.

Sometimes it will be inconvenient. Sometimes I will fight it because I am stubborn. The way that I people sometimes don't accept help so recovery takes longer. My grandmother refused surgery to set a broken wrist because she was fearful of the treatment. My friend's elderly father walked around on his broken leg because he was too proud and impatient to accept help. I still need loving loudly.

I need the loud love of Susanna where she expressed deep sorrow and held me tightly. I need the loud love of purposeful replies to my woeful social media posts. Thanks Mrs G. I need the loud love of people saying hello. Of people checking in. Of recognition that coming into church, sending my kids into the care of ex friends who have blocked all contact, reaching out with the odd text or email is harder than you can imagine and the rejection when I am not greeted or my communication is  ignored it breaks me into tiny pieces.

I need loud love. I need driving around whilst I try to fix myself and regain the strength to drive myself again, or at least hobble to the bus stop.

Please love someone loudly today. You don't know how much it might mean to them.