I am flawed ... and loved by God.

I've received some not-very-nice comments on my posts lately. Comments made by individuals hiding behind the cover of an Anonymous name. They are made in the hopes of hurting me, I'm supposing.

On Monday, one of the pictures in my post was of me slurping a de lightfully yummy berry smoothie. And my hair.looks.awful. Really, quite grungy.

A lovely anonymous commenter wrote " Do you not wash your hair?"

Ha! I have to laugh at this one. It sure looks like I don't. But I promise, I do. Usually. Sometimes.

I had some comments last week that were not quite so easy to brush off, and I was in tears for most of the day after reading them. As often happens when people attack us, I began to question who I am as a person and as a blogger. This strange barrage of hurtful comments all of the sudden has got me thinking. Thinking about where my identity is, and where I am finding my worth.

Let me tell you, I have my flaws.

One, as was so poignantly pointed out -- sometimes my hair looks awful. 

Our bedroom most always looks like the photo on the left. Like, I am stepping over piles of laundry to get to my bed some days. The photo on the right-- rare occurrence.

(Old photos-- our bedroom looks ways different now, but more on that later.)

Often, I'm so completely disorganized that I send a giveaway painting to the same person, twice. (Yes, that happened this week. I'm not sure where I left my brain.)

My dad's Italian genes give me nice olive skin, but that also means that I'm quite hairy fuzzy. As in, before I leave to see Chris, I have an appointment to get my face waxed.

I often am so busy that despite my best efforts, I don't get around to responding to your comments. I feel bad about that, but I hope you understand that I appreciate each of you, anyway.

All too often, I find myself having to clean mold out of the fridge. One day I'll keep on top of my leftovers. Eh, maybe.

I'm lazy. I'm selfish. At dinner parties, I would often rather sit on the couch with a glass of wine than help clean up the dishes.

I'm a real person, with real flaws, sins, and quirks.

But.

 I am, first and foremost, a child of the risen God. My identity does not come from how my hair looks. It doesn't stem from what my blog readers have to say about me (good or bad!), how my blog design looks or what I do and say throughout the day.

[via]

Romans 8: 38 says, " For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So if all of those things can't keep our God from loving us, than I'm pretty sure that moldy leftovers, lost to-do lists and bad hair days can't either. Because God knows things about our hearts that we would never and could never share on our blogs. He knows every selfish thought that goes through our minds and in spite of all that, He loves every greasy hair on our heads.

And that, my friends, is what I am resting in today. And tomorrow, I'll have to pick up my Bible to remind myself of this again, because I'm also... forgetful.


*I don't write this for you guys to feel bad for me getting these comments. Just want to share some encouragement that I've been feeling today. So I hope you are encouraged!*