It was after midnight when someone tagged me on Facebook. I checked to see what it was.
“Came across this going through some old photos from about 5 years ago,” this person wrote as his caption next to big words on a picture. “Words of wisdom from David McElroy.”
I don’t remember writing the words, but it sounds like my voice, so I’m sure I did. As I read the words, I agreed with them, but I found myself painfully aware that I haven’t always lived up to them.
“You can’t force someone to believe you are worth making a priority,” I wrote, apparently about five years ago. “If you try, you will end up bitter, hurt and angry. If a person doesn’t value you enough to make you a priority, it doesn’t matter what he or she says — even if the words are, ’I love you.’ Love is lived out through priorities and actions, not words and wishes. If you wait and beg to become someone’s priority, you’re not showing how much you love someone else. You’re showing how little you value yourself.”
I remember what it feels like to be a woman’s priority.

Who was this attractive woman? Why did her story not ring true?
I haven’t learned to stop walking on eggshells around angry people
We’re all prisoners of a culture which demands that we conform
Political attitudes about race prove we’re still living in a tribal world
When we feel we’ve lost control, our behavior stops making sense
This is my new wife, Claire — but she doesn’t actually exist
Time for anger? Dissent is good, but ask what the dissenters stand for