Somebody Loved

  Rain turns the sand into mud

    Wind turns the trees into bone

Stars turning high up above

                 You turned me into somebody loved

— The Weepies

  

Maybe it's the lateness of the hour. Maybe it's the weight of sorrow from the last two weeks finally breaking in. Maybe it's my lack of sleep. And maybe it's just truth hitting my unguarded heart... I stumbled across this song tonight, sitting in the soft twinkle lights of my kitchen. And now I find myself weeping as I listen on repeat. 

So much is held in that tiny line, "You turned me into somebody loved." Not someone lovable. Goodness knows all of us have moments, hours, whole seasons of being unlovable. But when someone loves us, even in in those seasons, well... We become someone loved. Not by anything we've done, but because someone makes the choice to love us. And that choice shapes who we are. 

And maybe I'm weeping in my kitchen because I've lived my whole life with people who love me. Knowing God loves me. Not everyone gets that—always knowing they are loved. And when someone does really, truly love them, it transforms them into somebody loved. 

 

Maybe I'm letting the tears flow here in my kitchen, because I also know that love for the first time. I haven't dated many men, but the ones I dated in the past, while I knew they loved me, never made me feel like somebody loved.

However, those words pierced my heart tonight because they resonated as utterly true. Nick has turned me into somebody loved. Maybe because he sees me for me—not as a project, not as an accessory, not as a sounding board, and not as an ego boost. I don't exist to highlight his story. He just loves me. 

I've always been loved, and I don't even know how grateful I am for that incredible gift...until I see the fractured lives all around me. Until my own world cracks. I've always known my parents' love, my sisters' love, God's love—I've never known life without their love. I accidentally take it for granted. I don't mean to, and I am deeply thankful for that constant love... It has made me who I am in so many wonderful, healthy ways.

But I lived so much of my life without Nick's love that I can see the difference between who I was before and who I am now. There is a different kind of comfort and confidence that comes when you are turned into somebody loved. 

As I listen to this song, I think of a young woman, neglected, abandoned as a child. She is out in the cold, on the streets. She has been used and abused. She is skittish and gauche. And then, someone comes along and loves her, even when she is graceless. They don't love what she could become, they just love her. . .as she is. And through that love, she is changed. Because how can we not be changed when we find that we are somebody loved? And yet, it isn't who-we-will-become that the person loves. It is us, as we are—messy and ridiculous—that they love. Certainly this can happen in non-romantic relationships, too. But there seems to be something sweeter when this change comes though a spouse (or an almost-spouse). 

My my writing skills are dusty, but even if they weren't, I really can't gather into words what that two minute forty-one second song says so simply and profoundly.

All I know is that being turned into somebody loved is a miracle—a gift from God.

____

1. Somebody Loved lyrics © Deb Talan Music, Steve Tannen Music

2. Photo by Tuva Mathilde Løland on Unsplash