I am very much a words person. I feel most myself when I am writing, but I repeatedly am stuck in a place of not feeling “good enough” because I mostly write for a social media audience and somewhat set myself up to “depend” on the likes to determine if I’ll continue to write or not. Just the other day I was so rooted in my own insecurity that I spent over an hour on Google researching how to know if your friends unfollow or hide you on social media. I was on the verge of making myself physically ill that people that say they love me don’t like what I post (No joke. I really did).
I know enough of how social media functions, especially on Facebook, to know that it is “Likes” that push you at the front of the line, force you to be noticed in the feed, or help you make the rounds on your friends’ lists. I had set up an expectation – an unfair one at that – that if my friends and family really loved me they would let me know my words matter by a “Like” button. It pushed the focus off of why I write – actually WHO I desire to consistently write about – to be squarely centered on the approval of my friends and family. In my real life world, I much prefer to text how I feel, tell someone in person how I feel, or show someone how I feel about them, so depending on a social media recognition really isn’t an accurate recognition at all. The truth is that many don’t see everything posted by anyone, so all my insecurity does is make me the center of the world, rather than use my words for their original intended purpose – to encourage. An audience of One is Who I obey, and an audience of readers at all is the one He also must bring.
I read the statement “Be generous with your likes” from a blogger this week and it really pulled me in. It shifted the lens of the words I write bringing some kind of desired return for me, and returned it to valuing people right where they are. Instead of asking, “Who out there is supporting me,” I ask, “Who out there can I support?” The blogger talked about she uses her LIKES on social media to show her support because she noticed the people who valued her, and wanted to show their support to her, be generous with their likes – so much so that she didn’t even know how much it had pushed her to go forward with her dreams.
Seems like such a simple thing that wouldn’t make a big difference, but doesn’t valuing and loving people right where they are when we want to be Jesus to them change everything? When we LIKE with a Jesus lens, their life is encouraged, and our life is, too, because we are awakened to the fact that we just have love every opportunity we get, and Jesus will bring the life change.
Not all life is an easy life to LIKE or LOVE. Truth is, I have to unfollow and hide toxic people from time to time, but our people, the ones we hold dear is a great place to start being generous with our LIKES. It means I will not withhold a LIKE from those I call “family”, or I have named “friend,” or those God has called me to serve alongside. If we don’t get those LIKES right, then there is no chance we’ll ever see much more than a mediocre display of love because we’ve limited it from exploding from the start. Our LIKES are definitely not limited to social media…in fact, that’s not where we need to be doing most of our living at all. Rather, we ask these things…Do the people we see everyday feel we are generous with our LIKES, or have we assumed they just know? Do our kids know we are over the moon for them because we’ve actually told them? Do our co-workers know we’ve got their back because we truly believe “two are better than one”? Does the insecure, the angry one, the one who feels they’ve been dealt the bad lot know we believe in them? Let’s turn the tide on the LIKES. Let’s throw them around like confetti! Let’s do all we can to see the people in our lives soar to their dreams because we’ve been generous in our support of who God is making them to be.
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