DESERVE ‘better’.

I was watching Bridgerton. At one point it would have seemed that Daphne -with her innocence and poise- deserved more than the bitter, defiant Simon; that she deserved the amiable and kind Prince. But Daphne of course chose Simon, the one she loved, even though he had his complications attached to him. As I was thinking about this I remembered a question that was posed twice in another movie – Perks of being a wallflower – “Why do nice people choose the wrong people to date?” and “I asked myself, why do I and everyone I love, pick people that treat us like we’re nothing?” to which the response was, “we accept the love we think we deserve.”

I stopped at “deserve.” I must say that I find that to be a loaded word; it implies being entitled to, having earned something, being WORTH something. I struggle with that. I struggle with the cliché statement - “you deserve better.” But how do I DESERVE better? It implies that I think I am ‘better’ and resultantly feel entitled to getting ‘better’. So I find myself thinking, “am I better? Really?” Am I not just as prone to lying and being inconsistent as any other person? How often am I also bitter, self serving, unfair? So then how can I stand with boldness and claim to be entitled to ‘better’? what have I done that has earned me ‘better’?

The Christian in me thinks to think of myself as ‘better’ is to imply that God would’ve created me ‘better’ than others – and that makes no biblical sense to me because God has made us all equal and He loves each one of us and calls us His own. So then I think to myself that it’s not possible; God can’t create His other children to be lesser, to be vile; and make me ‘better’ - everything that He makes is good.

So then I’m conflicted; is it that we accept the love we think we deserve because truly we are no better ourselves and therefor technically ‘better’ doesn’t actually exist its just that every person has their own variant of imperfection…OR is there really ‘better’?

I circle back to Daphne - she chose Simon. At some point his bitterness got the better of him and they seemed to be falling apart; but we saw how when he let Daphne’s love complete its work in him and he chose to let go of certain variants of his imperfections – their love was better for it.

I guess for me what I note is that we actually subconsciously give love before we accept it; therefor when it’s time to accept we accept anything - thus the ‘better’ doesn’t lie in what we accept, but the ‘better’ lies in what the accepted will do. Love perfects its work when the accepted recognises that they posses a variant of imperfection; but they choose to let love make them ‘better’. The hopeless romantic in me believes that love isn’t finding the ‘better’ person, but that love MAKES persons better… and if you do find yourself with a person that doesn’t want to let love make them better; then I guess it is then that you both ‘deserve better’; not because you’re better, but because love can only perfect its work where there is room to do so. Love makes us better and THAT’s the better we all deserve.