life on planet earth on Unlovable

My friend Christina, a licensed therapist, tells me that Psychiatry 101 teaches therapists that when you and I choose to believe a lie about ourselves, it’s one of these three lies we believe: I’m he...

And so, like runaway slaves, we either flee our own reality or manufacture a false self which is mostly admirable, mildly prepossessing, and superficially happy. We hide what we know or feel ourselves...

And so, like runaway slaves, we either flee our own reality or manufacture a false self which is mostly admirable, mildly prepossessing, and superficially happy. We hide what we know or feel ourselves...

13-year-old Mary is having a tough day and has stretched herself out on the couch to do a bit of what she thought to be well-deserved complaining and self-pitying. She moans to her Mom and brother, “N...

Unable are the Loved to die / For Love is Immortality…

I don’t know what I did wrong. But he had that “calmer than calm” look that hid a rage inside. I picked up the phone and saw her name. Not now. I can’t handle her right now. I scanned the room, lookin...

[Alienation is] “the state of mind that can find a social order remote, incomprehensible, or fraudulent.

Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.

To allow myself to be loved by God in my deepest brokenness is to experience a love that defies human comprehension.

Perhaps you have been ensnared by a sinful habit that you will not abandon, and your guilt is so overwhelming you are ashamed to approach Christ. Whatever the reason for your broken intimacy with God,...

Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.

A weed is but an unloved flower.

The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.

He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!

Only the beautiful is loved . . . we cannot help loving what is beautiful.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot...

I’m unfinished. I’m unfixed. And the reality is that’s where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff....

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

This [brokenness] is what needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, this is what we tend to reject. Here the seeds of a corrosive self-hatred take root. This painful vulnerability is the characteristic fea...

Don't waste your time explaining who you are to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.

All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...

…there are two ways to fail to let Jesus be your Savior. One is by being too proud, having a superiority complex—not to accept his challenge [to accept what the gospel says about our unworthiness]. Bu...

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap i...

Unable to value, unable to enjoy.

Apathy is the acceptance of the unacceptable.

Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Although an ungrateful heart is not an offence in itself, still a name for ingratitude is regarded as baser, more odious and more detestable than a name for injustice.

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or...

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.