Love, Dad.

I guess realizing that for 18 years you knew you had a God who told you He was your father but never really realizing I am not an orphan is a little mind blowing.

I mean, lets be real, I have a heck of a family. My dad rocks on so many levels, my mom is a total superstar, and all 4 sisters just blow me out of the water. I never really thought I needed that Heavenly Dad. "He's only for the orphaned kids. The ones who had really bad dad's and don't understand what it's like to have a good dad." As if I was immune to the disease of this life. As if He was indifferent towards me because I "didn't need Him as bad". WOW.
I didn't get that He actually cared about the heartbreak I had suffered in my life. That He actually hurts for my hurts because He is my Dad. My Father. And that it's ok for me to acknowledge that I have been hurt even though it was different than other wounds people had suffered.

"Ha, Jo, how much of a jerk would you have to be to pretend like you've been wounded. Look at those other kids around you who have suffered cataclysmic pains in their lives. You have NO room to talk."
"Jo, get over yourself. You think you deserve that kind of a friendship from someone? You think it's ok for you to just approach them and think you deserve their love?"
"Well, I'm glad you don't think you're enough Jo, because you aren't. You can't even compete with the other girls out there. Guess you should just accept it because that's how it is."

For some reason, in my eyes these things were just acceptable because I could "get past them on my own". God was "indifferent to the lies satan was spoonfeeding me because I had a good dad who loved me and that was enough." How wrong. Somehow, the hardest part for me to grasp is that I grew up knowing that satan lies in these ways to us all the time. That he is just like that, but I didn't think that the lies he told me were enough to need help overcoming.

Here's the deal. I have been fed lie after lie after lie for so long that, even now that God has exposed those lies and called me out of them, it is still almost overwhelming to think that I was so entangled and that satan had such a hold in my life.
"But God.."

He says I'm enough. He says He doesn't need any talents or works I can offer to make me more worth it. He says Joanna Marie McCormick as she is is enough because Jesus makes me enough. He says when he looks at me, he sees beauty. Actually, let me just tell you what He told me through a song he wrote, through me, for me, and for every girl who has been told by the world that she isn't enough.

Beautiful princess
There was a voice in your life
Told you that everything that you were
Could never measure up
Up to what I see
 
But I'll remember quite clearly
The night you finally realized
Said "Daddy, could you help me?
Could you show me what you see,
Cause everything that I see
is broken."

Oh my daughter
I'm here to wage war on all of the lies
Cause I say that it's just about time you open your eyes

Everything from your head to your toes
The freckles on your nose
I paint even those
The sound of you singing
Your gentle heart beating
It's all what makes you worth it to me

Faith like a child
What a beautiful thing
But somewhere along the way
Somebody told you that you were too much for me

Oh my daughter
I'm here to wage war on all of the lies
Cause now I say that it's just about time you open your eyes

Everything from your head to your toes
The freckles on your nose
I paint even those
The sound of you singing
Your gentle heart beating
It's all what makes you worth it to me

Well, Dad could you show me
Cause I just don't see what you see
Well, darling, it's simple
When I see you I just see me

- I didn't know it, but this Jo, the one the world says needs to be different to be loved, is enough. She is worth it, and she is lovely. Isn't it great? Because that makes you worth it too, if only you'd let your heart be opened to it.