As I sifted through possibilities, contemplating what next to write, one seed-thought kept returning … compelling me. The ‘right words’ making themselves known in their ‘right time’.

I feel that sense of ‘rightness’ now, though this may be a more difficult or sober thing to read about, and you may wonder at first, where is the echo of belovedness in this?! But there will be echoes of belovedness, I assure you! For belovedness is my life-theme, a thread I now see woven widely throughout the fabric of creation …

This is a story from when I didn’t believe I was beloved, nor knew that I could live in Belovedness. This is also the story of how and why I came to view myself, my life, everyone, everything, through the lens of belovedness … how belovedness has redeemed the story that came before.

The semi-colon has become a very powerful image of a life continued, continuing. My semi-colon is belovedness, the story following the semi-colon is belovedness … but now I can look back at the story before the semi-colon with the eyes and the heart of belovedness, also.

What preceded my semi-colon?

Years of chronic depression, a baseline feeling of vague disquiet often like a dark cloud on the horizon of an otherwise blue sky. Intermittently there arose intense, acute storms, sometimes situational, sometimes appearing to arrive with seemingly no external provocation …

A spirit-crushing inner certainty of myself as a completely disordered person, mentally and spiritually defective ….

A coexisting certainty my cross was to bear that disorderedness, that defectiveness, with all the grace and strength possible, all the days of my life …

A broken sense of self. A broken sense of belovedness too, leading all too often into an existential despair … many dark nights of the soul.

A deep-rooted, soul-sapping sense of non-belovedness. I believed some did love me, but I did not feel lovable, divinely lovable or beloved. I did not know my belovedness, nor that Belovedness already knew me in an infinitely intimate way …

Five years ago – it seems like another lifetime ago – I descended into a severely debilitating period of deep depression, months-long, eternity-long, with multiple suicide attempts. Many factors were at play, too many to count here. Intensifying my downward spiral was a severe reaction to powerful psychiatric medication prescribed for what was later determined a misdiagnosis. The physical and mental side effects left me more incapacitated than depression on its own ever had. A shambling shell of a person, whose body and brain had gone haywire … my inability to care for my children, my keen awareness of my diminished intellectual ability, my profound sense of non-belovedness, damaged relationships, all excruciating.

I was convinced I was too dangerously impaired to live … yet it wasn’t that I wanted so much to die. I wanted to be free. Free from the chilling dread constantly washing over me, free from the defective mind and character I believed I had … free, safe, whole.

So, in the summer of 2011, I tried to escape this life multiple times, multiple ways. Specifics need no detailing here, but this I want to share …

The time I was sitting in my dark closet, feeling both afraid of the pain of death and the pain of life. The time I felt, strangely, some certainty that if I crossed over, there would be no judgment, only the wrapping of cosmic arms around me, my hell, my suffering vanished. An echo of belovedness; the presence of Belovedness … it was with me already, yet I knew it not, and thought it only waited beyond this life.

I believe now that Belovedness saved me. Even though I left that closet and the ever-present dread rolled in like a tsunami and washed it into oblivion – until an indescribable spiritual experience three years ago this month in which I finally knew the indwelling presence of Belovedness in the deepest fibers of my body, mind, soul. My broken self, my broken sense of belovedness and of my belovedness – knit together, made whole.

Oh, I’m still emotionally intense, passionate, I feel the suffering in the world more deeply, I mourn, I weep for it. Yet, I’m grounded now in a grateful, mindful joy. Miracles happen!

And when I look back on those endless days and months, all the brokenness, the brutal moments, the pain and the shame of the wounds I received and the wounds I gave … I see all redeemed in the light and presence of belovedness. The ‘me’ who experienced them is healed and whole, in the light of belovedness … this is the gift that I gave, give, to my past and present self. Reconciliation.

I am grateful for the brokenness and the suffering, not because they themselves are good, but because I found good through them – blessing from them. I am grateful for my experiences of depression, even of being suicidal, not because they themselves were good, but because I drew good from them. They themselves were not the gifts, but many gifts I discovered within them … ultimately, the gift of belovedness. Liberation.

And now, I am with Belovedness, beloved always, in all ways. And this is my gift to you: You are beloved, always, in all ways. Whoever and wherever you are, you are beloved.

Belovedness is here; live in it! Find the gifts that may be for you in whatever is your brokenness and suffering; find the gift of belovedness there and embrace it.