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.

Painful longing is too powerful to express heart’s anguish in words
Life is like flying a plane as you assemble it from a box of parts
We have a hunger for love just as strong as the need for food, water
Good character matters far more than winning political arguments
Intelligent, well-meaning people often pull in opposite directions
Modern life doesn’t have to be as complicated as we try to make it
Spooky stories: My friends share their real-life weird experiences
THE McELROY ZOO: Meet Tommy, who needs a home before winter