Throughout this day of quiet desperation I heard a voice whispering in that place within my heart where all truth is tucked away.

It simply said, "I Love you.  I Love you.  I am making you into the woman I made you to be."

I Love you.  I Love you.  I Love you.  All day long, undeniably, I Love you.  And the ache of this being loved is almost unbearable.  But all day long, I Love you.

So many questions that I have no answers to keep me awake, keep me afraid, keep me unsure.  But that voice in the place of truth is whispering, always whispering.

The pain of being overlooked, ignored, ridiculed, has taught you compassion.  Your tears have mingled with the outcasts of the world who have never been told I Love you.  The average, ordinary, unattractive you that you see in the mirror every day (who is beautiful in my sight) is echoed in mirrors and hearts around the world where no beauty queen can offer a sense of self worth.

Who can understand the asker of these impossible questions that seem to have no answer who has never questioned themselves?  When no answer is good enough for a life broken by the journey, how can you know that all the answers are wrong unless you've been broken too?  How can you be my I Love you if you don't know that in your brokenness, lost and uncertain, I Love you too?

Someone told me tonight that things will be better, that I will find happiness someday.  And I asked, "When?  When I'm dead?"  And I realized that, yes, maybe when I'm dead.  Maybe not until I'm dead.

Because when God whispers I Love you, and when He Loves through you, the earth trembles, the mountains tumble, the enemy fights back, and you have to be stripped away, and you have to be stripped bare.  And only in that desperate ache of I Love you, in that lonely longing of I Love you, can you embrace a broken, suffering world and speak I Love You.