To Be Loved With Grace

I hope my friends know how much love I have for them. 

I hope I bring a sense of grace into their lives, which they can forever come back to as a safe place to grow.

I hope they see the light that this grace brings and use it each day, so they never feel lost. 

I hope the people around me recognize how bright the light is that they bring into my life, and that for that reason, they will never stand alone. 

I hope my friends never feel as if the light they bring to this world is never enough, that they always know that to love is to be loved, but to be loved is to be handled with grace.

I hope my friends know that to be handled with grace is to feel seen, to feel heard and to know the beauty and the worth in their presence. 

I hope I’m the friend who gives others a space of grace to grow into their best selves, because I know what it’s like to be confined to a life without grace. 

I have so much love for the people in my life because I know how it feels to think your unwanted. 

I spent years of my life just wishing and wishing that someone would look my way, that just one person would see me as more than their second option.

The weight of being present in other people’s lives gets heavier to bare, and you realize that being dependable in the eyes of others means at the end of the day the only one who’s going to be there for you is yourself. 

I’ve found myself picking up the pieces of the version of myself, which I eventually have grown to hate, because no one else thought they were worthy enough to love, so why should I. 

I convinced myself time and time again that if I just keep showing up, others will eventually start to show up for me too.

I showed up when they invited me to go shopping, but later found out they just needed a ride.

I picked up the phone to hear them crying in the middle of the night, but they only called me because they knew I was the only one who would answer.

I showed up when they asked, and I fulfilled any request they had because in my head, we were friends. 

I showed up because I feared the results of the one time I said “no.” 

I showed up every time they asked, until the day that I sat alone in my car late into the night and picked up the phone….voicemail.

I showed up every time until I stopped. No one called, no one wondered where I had gone

No one had to sit there and tell what they thought about me; their actions spelled it out in big, bold letters. 

I believed that I was disposable, that my place in this world was below that of the people who were my so-called friends. 

I hope my friends now know how happy it makes me to get to love them. 

 I hope my friends know that my love comes from a place in my heart that still aches to this day, a place in my heart that still feels the pain of being everyone’s last choice, a place in my heart that sometimes still feels alone in a room full of people. 

I hope my friends know that this place in my heart is able to love because of them.

My friends met me with nothing but grace, which helped me to grow out of the person who felt her presence wasn’t wanted.

My friends grace helped me grow into a person who understands what it means to feel loved. 

My friends grace helped me realize that love is not purely conditional.

My friends grace helped me realize my worth.

I forever hope that my friends know how bright the light they bring into the world truly is. 

Our friendships remind me every day that:

To love is to be loved with grace forever and always.