To Be Found

I don’t want to lose myself in someone, I want to be found.

This thought struck me with such clarity the other day, like a bell ringing clear and pristine.

This, remember this, it said.

I felt the truth and rightness of this immediately, friend.

You’re probably wondering what the difference is, and I am glad to explain, I really am.

You see, losing yourself in someone is finding your place and worth in the other.

Perhaps you’re like I’ve been, and this means that the more someone needs you, the more you feel loved.

So, you make yourself indispensable.

Making the appointments, cooking the meals, folding the clothes, remembering the birthdays, playing an important role crossing all those literal t’s and dotting all of those metaphorical i’s.

Satisfying our need to be needed and significant beyond ourselves.

This works in the workforce, but not in relationship.

Relationship requires two equal partners and no one is indispensable.

Being found, friend, that is something else entirely.

To be found means that you are repeatedly asked to reveal yourself, layer by layer.

It’s an invitation to shed the inauthentic and a welcoming of your best self.

This is an, “I want to see YOU.”

How often do we meet people who extend us this invitation, to bloom more fully into ourselves?

Who, by their mere being, inspire us to do both the shedding and blossoming necessary to stand naked before them?

I say naked intentionally, friend, because that’s how it feels when you let go of all the things you put on in an attempt to be more pleasing or likable

or to be and feel needed.

This isn’t about need, not in the sense that someone requires you to budget their checkbook, stock their fridge, return overdue library books, and mend whatever might be broken.

No, this is only the need to see you.

That.

That’s what I want.

To see and to be seen.

To invite and to be invited.

To shed and to bloom.

To let go of doing, and – instead – do more being.

Always,

Your Trusted Friend ♥️