Belonging

This is week 4 in the series about our 5 Emotional Needs. The goal for the series is to look at each of these needs and find out what it looks like to fulfill them with an Empowering perspective and what it looks like when we fulfill them with a Limiting Belief perspective.

This week the focus is on the need to belong.

I am really struggling with this right now because the world is just crappy. What is going on??

Ya’ll, EVERYONE reading this – I need you to just stop.

Stop and understand that we are all just human beings. We were created by God who made us in His image.

We were made in love.

Why are we not loving each other?

What gives someone the right to look at someone else and decide if they are better or less than anyone else?

Where does that come from?!

I don’t get it…I don’t understand it at all.

We are all just trying to belong, to be involved in something greater than ourselves, to give ourselves purpose and meaning, to know that we are an integral part in other people’s lives, to feel connected.

Who feels connected right now? Who even wants to belong to this world right now?

Do you ever get to the point where you are in like a really loud, crowed room or the people around you are arguing or things just feel like they are spinning out of control and you want to scream for everything to just stop?

That is where I am today. I just want to scream at the world to just STOP!!!

STOP hating each other!

STOP judging each other!

STOP being so mean to each other!

STOP making people feel like they don’t belong!

Years ago, I was taught to imagine that the person in front of me has an invisible sign around their neck that says, “Make me feel important”.

Can you even imagine if we treated each other that way?

What would that do if we all helped each other feel important?

How do we even do that – well, we could start with being nice.

We could treat each other like human beings.

Go back to the Golden Rule and treat others like we want to be treated.

If I could be the voice of every single person that is suffering because they feel like they don’t belong in our world, here is what I believe they want you to hear:

“Help me feel like I belong here – that doesn’t mean I have to look like you, it doesn’t mean that I have to sound like you, it doesn’t even mean love like you – it doesn’t mean any of that.

It just means you see me as a human being, someone created for a purpose, someone who has talents and abilities that can make this world a really cool place if you would just let me belong here.

Because if you don’t, if you don’t care about me, then I will start believing the lies and I will convince myself that I am not good enough, not smart enough, not loving enough…or whatever it is, I am not enough. I will convince myself that I don’t belong.

And that’s where things start to roll downhill.”

That’s the voice – it may be your voice.

You may be the one screaming this on the inside.

I felt tremendously helpless when I read about the killings of Ahmaud Abrey and George Floyd, not to mention the bazillion others I don’t even know about. All these people who are being told, “You don’t belong here.” And then being killed for it.

Who gives you that right?!

Who freaking gives you the right to tell anybody that?!!!

I just don’t understand it.

I am sorry, I am so sorry to all the people out there who are being told, beaten and killed because someone thinks you don’t belong.

So, here I am feeling ridiculously helpless and yet God gives me a story to share with you all that hopefully we will keep in our heart:

‘One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked, he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.

Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the boy simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish, Sir”.

The old man chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”

The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, “I made a difference to that one!”’

UGH!!!!

I can’t change the world, this BLOG isn’t going to change the world, but if I can make a difference to one person, then that’s my purpose.

That is how we belong, guys, make a difference in people’s lives. It will matter to that one.

And if we all did that, then it will matter to the world.

<>< KC