Chilllleeeeeee, can you believe the month of March is
ending? I can’t, though I felt each day move rapidly through work meetings,
slight travel and friend’s day outings. While I didnt feel like I was making
progress towards this year’s goals, turns out I was doing a lot more than I
thought. So, before I DIVE head first into this week’s blog post, I want you to
read the last post on “The Value of Self Celebration” and the come back to this.
Reason being, this post is going to be much more intense and if you are
anything like me, a warning is always nice. On the flip side, if you are
anything like me too, you are a straight shooter and you don’t mind ripping the
band-aide clean off the wound. I take it you have selected your passion, so Ill
carry on.
One evening while thinking about calling my ex boyfriend
/old friend/ best friend, I found myself missing him. I asked myself countless
times, “was it him or was it the situation”? While in that moment I wasn’t able
to resolve, I opted out of calling him. Truthfully, this person was old news
and I had dated him ten years ago. One would think he made such an impact, but
I challenged myself to believe otherwise. Without going into grave details
surrounding our relationship, just know we parted due to a difference in
vision.
Instead of calling, I grabbed my phone and logged onto
Youtube. I selected a sermon by Matthew Stevenson titled “Self Esteem” and
allowed the word of God to reveal areas of brokenness.
Here are the few things I learned while listening to this
very message on repeat.
Self esteem is truly the hardest thing I have ever worked
at. I know that sounds odd, but no matter how old I get, the little girl that
fought for acceptance and found it not still pops up at the worst times. At
times when my gangsta is being tried or when I am being gossiped about. Id like
to believe the words of the fourth grader was only words, and the trauma from
my childhood would pass, but the ever-present truth was I was still hurting. I
was still hurting but somehow, I didn’t feel the throb anymore, this pain had
grown with me. Being told that I wouldn’t be much or being told what I didn’t
deserve in life had been registered in my mind and locked away in my hurt box.
Though the words were never repeated, and the moments wasn’t relived, the hurt
box went ever where I went.
Unbeknownst to me, by the time I had gotten into my first REAL
(yes, I must put that in caps because all the other ones was a fluke and
looking back so was ol boy. However, I am not throwing shots!) relationship, I
was so broken, and I didn’t even know it. I thought I was functioning at 100%
not knowing my assumed very best was the equivalent to 20%. The relationship
extracted every flaw and every insecurity and sadly, I was not only affected by
my upbringing, I was reliving the very thing I said I wouldn’t do.
There would be times when family, friends and guys that I
have dated have tried to critique me and the whole things goes left. I would
get really defensive and or shut down and remove myself from the relationship.
I didn’t know endurance and I certainly didn’t take too kind to people trying
to tell me anything about anything. While thinking back to those time, growing
up I had to fight for everything. I had to fight to wear my outfits the way I
wanted to, I had to fight to play the violin instead of a band instrument and now
I must fight to become the woman I have been called to be. My point is, I only
knew endurance in the fight. I thought everything worth having was worth the
fight. I would verbally fight, I would physically fight, I would emotionally
fight but I knew nothing about spiritual fighting.
After consuming all the stuff outsiders would say, it became
extremely easy to believe it. Though I fought the thoughts in my mind, I had a
harder time fighting the agreement of three or more. The moment I began to
believe what others said about me, was the day my self esteem was shot and from
that day until my adult years, I would only function at 20%. Of course, the
20%, was the most toxic parts of me.
To repair self-esteem, we must start at the root and remove
all the tare. The tare is representative of doubt, anger, fear and self-hate.
When I use the word self-hate, I want you to consider two ends. If you can love
something, you can hate something. The moment we get into not loving a part of
us, we in turn self-hate that part of us. Now there is nothing wrong with
working on a thing, but keep in mind that too can become the road to self
-hate.
Another route to consider when repairing self-esteem is a
period of review and discarding. Try to pull on your memory and understand why
you do the things you do. Similar to pathology, everything we do can be traced
back to us either seeing it, hearing it hearing about it or recovering from it.
Ask yourself where did this behavior come from? Where did I learn this? Is this
a behavior I want to keep? When going through memories, a lot of things will be
revealed. While we may want to tackle them all at once, we must take it day by
day. It didn’t take a day to break us down and it certainly won’t take a day to
build us up. We are literally unlearning and relearning a new way to love
ourselves, daily!
Lastly but most importantly, the only way I made it through
this whole process was by giving my identity to Christ. His word had to have
more meaning than the man on the corner. His thoughts had to be higher than my
own and I had to believe it. To this day, I still struggle in areas. There are
days when I don’t want to leave my house because my skin is acting up or I
don’t want to tell the person who just hurt my feelings that they INDEED hurt
my feelings. Each day comes with its own tests and trails, but I can boldly say
that I am not where I used to be, and I am not where I’m gonna be. I am working
with God to perfect the things that concern me and resolving those things that
are working for me.
Where are you in your self-love journey?
Until next time,
Sara J.
P.S
If you really enjoyed this week’s blog post, be sure to
share it with a friend. Also, here’s that sermon link ya girl was raving about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BTeWPmFSnA
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