Music & Musings: “Known” by Tauren Wells

I heard this song today for the first time and it has been on repeat most of my evening. I hear it in a couple ways and it makes me think a lot of thoughts. Bear with me because it brought out some feelings and then I had to leave for church where some of those feelings were confirmed in terms of knowing I need to work on them! So let’s jump into to tonight’s musings on this music!

 

 

I purposely am not going to share the lyrics on this one. Take time to listen to it if you didn’t as you scrolled down. It is well worth the listen.

 

Right from the jump the song caught my attention when he talks about how the love is so unusual and how God sees through the mess inside Him. As I listened to it the first few seconds, I thought it was a love song about a couple and I was like, “I want to love like that and be loved like that.” But when he got to the part about being “fully known and loved by you”, I understood he was talking about God. And I still found myself thinking of how if God is going to love me that way, why should I expect any man to love me any less? But the idea of someone FULLY KNOWING me and STILL LOVING me blows my mind. So I stayed there for a little bit. Why is that so mind blowing to me? Why would I not think someone can love all of me, even the icky parts of my past? I know I am capable of that, maybe not right this moment though I am surprising myself each day with how much I am able to love lately. Why do I still struggle to believe someone can love all of my mind, thoughts, actions, being? I realized as I hung out and circled this question during church and we got onto the topic of intimacy with God that the problem is that I lack intimacy with myself and therefore still haven’t come to a place of loving who I am at this moment. I need to love me before I can believe that anyone else can. I have shared before that I struggle with intimacy, and I have been trying to overcome that by spending more quiet time with God, reading more of the Bible, spending time writing to Him, etc. But I don’t spend a lot of quiet time with myself truly getting to know myself. I journal but I don’t try to understand who sets my definition of beauty, why I feel my past makes me unloveable despite how often I am told I am loved and asked if I would like to get to know others. I am still trying to get to know who I am and fully embrace this woman I am while becoming her.

 

Fully knowing someone who has been through traumatic events isn’t an easy thing. The way our mind responds to innocent statements can sometimes be a bit much. We overthink things because we are so used to subtext. We are used to something not being said and wait for the aftermath. We look for the moments for the other shoe to fall. It is because we live in a place of fear – constantly on edge. I have been doing intense therapy to help me through a lot of my issues – I can finally sit with my back to a door, not jump when I hear a loud noise, and sit with quiet people without feeling a need to fill the silence out of fear for what’s coming. However, I still struggle with overthinking comments and sometimes responding out of my filter and understanding. Fully knowing all of that and saying “Where do I sign up” is like asking for headaches. Why would someone want to do that? But when I hear this song, I realize that maybe someday someone will. And even if not, God did. God does. God is. He is loving me even on my worst day.

 

At church tonight, the speaker spoke about how God knows us fully and still loves us. Knows me on my worst day in my worst circumstance and sees me there and STILL FULLY loves me. It made me think: maybe that is the key to “enough”. Maybe understanding how much God loves me and truly accepts me is enough to help me finally love myself because, as I was reminded last week, “If I am good enough for God, why am I not good enough for me?” (Lacy K.). Such a powerful thought – I am enough for the God of the universe, yet I wonder if someone will be able to truly one day love me without the requirements my ex had for me. I don’t know what it’s like to just be enough for someone – because my entire marriage I was always told I needed to be more. (And I did the same to him. We were young and were still finding ourselves so we both were really bad at accepting who we each were because we didn’t know who we were in our own skin.)

 

The song itself, the entire message of how deep the love is, how it talks about “hard truth and ridiculous grace”, how it talks about God continually pursuing him, I truly want to love like that one day. To look at another human being and understand there is no place I’d rather be than with that person because I love them so much. As I listened to the song, I realized that is how God is with us. He longs to be with us and just be. No agenda. Just sitting together and enjoying one another. There is nothing better than being with someone who you can just BE with. Someone you don’t have to speak around, don’t have to look a certain way, don’t have to act a certain way… you can just be you.

 

I really like this song. It helped me to address my intimacy issue at a new level tonight because I have to fall in love with me and become the woman for me that I say I can be for my guy when he accepts my love. My therapist and I are talking about that next week when we meet, as I can’t keep being things for people that I am unwilling to be for myself because I can’t do it with excellence if I don’t do it for me first. And that is going to be a challenge, but I am ready for it.

 

What did you think of the song? What lines stood out most to you?

 

Until next time,

~Shell

 

PHOTO CREDIT: Featured Photo by photo-nic.co.uk nic on Unsplash