With each post I read, I could feel my heart sink a little deeper into despair. Every picture was captioned with something beautiful about his wife. Her hair, her smile, her kindness, her sense of humor, her everything was being praised endlessly in post after post after post.

I didn’t even know this couple.

My husband and I were recently married and dealing with unexpected circumstances that seemed to lurk in every corner of our lives. Our finances were stretched thin, relationships around us were plummeting, sickness and disease infiltrated our close family, and my husband was in school full-time–just to name a few situations.

To make matters worse, I was feeling insecure and unimportant. So, I did what any foolish person would do; I jumped on my social media accounts and began mindlessly scrolling through everyone else’s highlights. I’m sure you can relate to the effects social media has on personal insecurities. Nevertheless, I continued to scroll to random profiles until I landed upon the magical husband/wife celebration happening in every pictured moment.

I remember comparing my season of life with this random couple’s social media presence and wondering when I’d experience moments like these where someone would be so proud of me that he’d want to show me off to everyone he knows. In the midst of my thoughts, the Holy Spirit answered my quiet confessions with His gentle compassion,

“You do have someone. You have Me. I love you so much that I gave My life for you, Jacquelyn.”

With a soft sigh of acceptance, I nodded my head and quietly whispered back in my spirit, “I know, Jesus. But You died for everyone.”

I was troubled that night as I tried to drift off to sleep. Why wasn’t I satisfied with the response from the Holy Spirit earlier? And the truth was found within my own misinterpretation of God’s loving compassion.

As it is, each of us is designed with an undeniable and fierce desire to be fully known and fully loved as we are. We don’t want to be another face in the crowd–unidentified, unimportant, and unknown. Instead, we want someone to care so deeply about us that we feel special, set apart, and important. In order to fulfill that desire, we seek out careers that elevate us to the highest promotion, or leadership roles in the church, or political positions, or we even set unrealistic expectations on our spouses. Each failed attempt to fulfill our God-given desire leaves us burning with a greater intensity to be fully known and fully loved by someone.

Anyone.

This intimate desire can only be filled by the One who gave that desire to us in the first place, and thankfully, He is fully capable of His role in satisfying our desperate need to be fully known and fully loved. However, it can be easy to slip into a pity-party when we feel as if God is not demonstrating His love in our lives.

The loving truth of Jesus dying for everyone filtered through my broken soul of insecurities and surfaced in my thoughts as a mediocre solution to my desperation. After all, everyone is a lot of people, and everyone doesn’t satisfy my desire to be known individually. But, when I brought my honesty and transparency to the Lord, He was gracious to revive the parts of my soul that were longing to be noticed, set apart, and deemed important.

The truth is, we have a Savior who fully knows us and fully loves us despite what He knows. He has numbered the hairs on our heads, and He knows our story from beginning to end, because He Himself has written it. With Him we are known, and not forgotten, important, and not unworthy, special, and not abandoned. We are not just another face in the crowd to the One who saved our souls. Instead, we are an individual jewel in His Crown of Glory.

When I find myself tempted to allow my husband, career, friends, family members, or challenging seasons in life establish my worth as a woman, I am reminded of the truth I was once too insecure to recognize, but desperately needed to hear.

When my God responded to my heart, He called me by name.

And when you cry out to Him, He’ll call you by your name, too.