You Were Wanted Before You Showed Up

Somebody picked out a name and said it out loud to see how it sounded. Somebody cleared a room. Somebody worried about you before they had ever met you.

That is a strange and good thing to think about, and most people never sit still long enough to think about it.

Being wanted is not something you earned by being good at anything. It happened first. It happened while you were doing absolutely nothing, because you had not started yet.

I am a shepherd, which means I sit at a lot of kitchen tables and listen to a lot of families. And here is what I have noticed. Almost everybody has a moment where they secretly wonder whether they are extra. Whether the room would be about the same without them.

The room would not be about the same. I have watched enough rooms to know.

And the design that got put in you, the actual way you are built, was not an accident of who your parents happened to be. It was chosen, and it was chosen carefully, and it is yours.

You were wanted first and built second. Neither of those was your doing, and both of them are yours to keep.