FAITH COPELAND
All my life, I’ve struggled to believe God loved me. Even, at times, outright rejected it.
I remember being deeply affected the first time I understood that sin was what put Jesus on the cross. The message of His love went straight over my head, and all I could see was horrifying proof of how horrible I must be. My mistakes had killed an innocent man.
I’ve struggled with a pretty deep self-hatred from an early age, and this, combined with my realization about sin, resulted in my mind being darkened by shame and perfectionism. I honestly believed that my imperfections needed to be hidden or else no one would love me. Love became something I had to earn, and I lived in fear that if I ever messed up, I’d be condemned.
Out of this, I developed an eating disorder, and soon was taking out my pain on my body. How I looked on the outside, I thought, would earn me love, and then no one would have to know how bad I was on the inside. Foolproof. Eventually, I fell away from good into a very worldly life, believing that I was too imperfect to be loved by Jesus or my family and that I may as well give up. I ran into very unhealthy relationships, worked insane hours at my jobs to gain approval, damaged my body with destructive habits. I became totally empty.
In 2018, I began to feel Christ’s whisper in my heart. A nagging call to stop running and come to Him. I knew it was God, but I tried to redouble my efforts to run away, protesting that I couldn’t be anything for Him, that I wasn’t worthy of love. But the call only got stronger, and finally, a year later, I surrendered to Him. I quit my job, left my boyfriend, left my friends and the city I was in, and let Him lead me to conversion.
I followed His call to become a Volunteer Missionary still thinking I had to earn His love, but my view has transformed. This past winter, I took the term away from Newman to finally address my struggles with my body and food, and in the process learned something I never dared to accept.
Christ died for me. For me, personally. Out of love. I didn’t force Him to. He didn’t die because I’m awful. He died because He wants me to be free. He went freely, out of love. The cross is not a sign of condemnation, rather, it’s a sign of how much we are worth. We were worth the life of God’s Son. My whole perspective flipped on its head, and I didn’t even realize it needed to.
I have hope, now, in the fact that “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus.”
Christ has taught me to receive His love, exactly as I am. This is the Good News of our God, that our worth comes from His love for us, and that He cannot be driven away.
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