His love.

She was addicted to drama, as fate would have it. From a young age she had learned to satisfy her soul on excessive intake of extreme emotion. When there was little food in her cupboard, she gorged on the secret indecency of a heart wrenching cry. If she felt alone, a mania-like curling of laughter might escape her youthful lips, anything to fend off the beast within. As she aged, and was able to participate in such exchanges of one adult to another, the stories from those she encountered were her drugs, before she knew or knew of, the lable 'co-dependent' in that she would listen and be transported to their souls, their lives and the drama enfolded would transport her from a troubled mind and fragile, eccentric spirit, to that of a dramatic encounter between two strangers. Life around her was an ever unfolding film that only drew curtain when she sat alone in her room. That was always a dark and scary place until she realized she was living a drama all her own. It was one of tears and depression and life-shaking pain and it was exhausting. It took years to realize that it was a drama she was writing all herself and it might take many years more to turn this tragedy into a comedy, but it was a conversion worth making. It would not be a love story unrequited or a comedy based on the pain of others, simply an appreciation of life and love and the problems that unfold throughout in the ordinary. It would be nothing more than her story, but it would be the story of her and she would be deciding the joy and the exciting and the inspiration which would ensue.
For years she had no idea what was missing. It felt like the Grand Canyon had been created in her soul, the schism between who she knew she could be and who she felt herself being was that great. It was not until she completely fell apart that she was able to see God. She saw her opportunity to live her life when she finally surrendered to the need she felt for Him to lead her life. Like the song says, she found him when she fell apart. She lay on the floor thinking her life would never go on and there was no way for her to continue when she opened the Bible, turned up the radio and waited. Waited for the flood of emotion to pass, waited out the negative voices that screamed failure in her ears, waited until she had the strength to look at herself in the mirror and ask what it was that she needed. She stared at those landscape colored saucers and she forced herself to keep staring until she asked, "Why?" She was wondering why she couldn't look into her own eyes with an eighth of the amount of love that she had so often bestowed upon previous lovers. Not that she wanted to elevate herself to any level, in fact she feared pride. She feared vanity almost above all else, most certainly beyond her fear of failure, as it was a constant reminder each time she happened upon any reflective surface.
Love though, she knew she couldn't do without it. In any religious context one is to believe that they must love themselves in order to fully love others. So, tonight she lie there and she made herself ask that question. "Why?" And she waited. She waited for God to speak through her this time. No answer from her mind and the knowledge she possessed would give her a satisfactory answer, it most certainly hadn't worked without God in the last few years. Until it clicked. It clicked and she saw what she missed at every other similar exchange between her being and its reflection. There was nothing that she did that should incite any sort of the unlove she so frequently felt when the thought of herself came up. It wasn't that she spoke negatively in her own mind which made her circumstance that much more confusing. Before now she would not talk harshly to herself, but as her friend once stated, there was something fundamentally wrong, most always.
To her, although she wanted to ask she wouldn't, the why, the question of why it took so long for her to realize that their approval and their love and lack of showing it, why all of that took so long to not matter, wouldn't matter. Time was gone once it passed and it wouldn't be regained with the why, that much she knew. From this point on she knew it would be different. Before this night, the night of her breakdown, she knew God loved her and she knew she was suppose to believe that, but it was almost impossible to convince herself that the ruler of this world would truly love the girl at the bottom of the world who kept complaining in a time when people were struggling for nutrition and support and safety. Well, she heard his voice through all of that and for the reasons she already listed, she couldn't ignore the answer. He loved her because she tried, because she would be great, because she needed him and she looked to him to strengthen her and she wanted more for her life and realized it would only happen when she let go of them and reached for the one who made her. How much better would life be once she gave up trying to please others and realized that she was already pleasing in his sight, especially because He could see where she was going and could see the heart of her efforts to get there? From all of that she felt loved, she could love herself and she could go on. Go on writing her story and rejoicing in all the acts of love that would most certainly accrue throughout the way.