Tag: faith

On the Fringe

Claiming MeLeave a comment

I have always been the one on the fringe. Never in the “in-crowd” always the new girl or the odd girl. I have tried my best to fit into everyone’s world and in the process destroyed myself. I have tried to be everything to everyone and that has brought me misery and tears. My childhood was constant chaos, constantly changing and moving. So many schools, so many people, and not ever finding my place. I longed for my safe space, my great-grandmother. She was my North Star, my constant…and she left this mortal place when I was 16. I felt my light go out, my world flipped upside down and never corrected itself until recently. I see how my childhood has played out in my adult life, the chaos, the seeking another safe place…someone to just love me and hold me.

I believe that there are advantages to being on the fringes. There is freedom. I don’t have to be anyone other than me. I don’t have a social clique that dictates what I wear, who I talk to, where I live, what I drive, who I date or marry, what I do or don’t do for a living…complete freedom to try on my life and see what fits or doesn’t. I have a pass to be the new woman or the odd woman…the free woman. I’m a woman that has spent too many years trying to make someone love or like her, forgetting the whole time that loving one’s self completely is the ultimate love and freedom. So today I am going to try on self-love and see what happens.

Will you join me in this trial? Will you try-on self-love and just see what happens?

Love,

Your friend on the fringes

Acceptance?

Claiming MeLeave a comment

*Acceptance- noun | ac-cep-tance 1. the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable.  2. the act of accepting something or someone.

*Accept- verb | ac-cept 1 a : to receive (something offered) willingly accept a gift
b : to be able or designed to take or hold (something applied or added)
2: to give admittance or approval
3 a : to endure without protest or reaction
b : to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable
c : to recognize as true : believe
4 a : to make a favorable response
b : to agree to undertake (a responsibility)

Thanks to Merriam-Webster for clarifying to me what accept and acceptance mean. I noticed that acceptance is a noun and accept is a verb. So for me today, I understand a little more on this journey of mine that by accepting (verb- action), I will get to a place of acceptance (noun- place). I may have to accept every day (every second) of the roller coaster ride I am on, yet one day I will arrive at acceptance.

I have read over and over again, the only way through anxiety and fear is accepting what is going on and not fighting it. Yet, no one has ever really taught me how to get there, until recently. I really don’t believe that you understand the place of acceptance until accepting is the only option you have left. This past year and a half of recovering from a medication has taught me what I truly can control and what I cannot, this has led me right to the healing power of accepting. I could not change anything that my body, mind or spirit was doing to heal itself…much like a person healing from a broken bone or car wreck, there is nothing they can possibly do to speed up the process of repair. So, every moment of every day I practice accepting what is going on and hold on to hope that it will come to an end one day and I will be in a different space or season than this one. However, as much as I want to speed through this season of healing, I am coming to learn so much about myself and life right now. I am grateful for that. I know that I will come out a better person because of this and will have much more wisdom from riding the storms out.

For today, I breath in and I breath out…acceptance is my destination and accepting is my action.

 

*definitions from Merriam-Webster.com

 

Be Still…

Claiming MeLeave a comment

I have been running my whole life. Always feeling that I wasn’t safe or wanted. I have looked for validation outside of me. I have beliefs and thoughts that are inside me that are not my own, especially about God, love, fears and life. I have been afraid of the darkness and facing those thoughts and fears.

I have put myself in situations that would affirm my false beliefs that I didn’t matter and I wasn’t safe, so in turn I would run. I have been searching for a “cure” to my own mind looking always outside of me. I have needed labels for everything that is happening, has happened and what will happen to me. I have felt that if I labeled it, then I can fix it or someone can. So I have self-imposed “labels” of everything from illnesses, to mental problems, to marriage destruction, keep naming them and I have probably slapped it on me.

My mind did the best it could to protect me and needs to know that I Love ME. I have always preoccupied myself with whys and hows, not implementing fully myself. Fears have had their power over me because I allowed it from false beliefs and not wanting to face me and do the work. I had become a slave to the pain, fear, worry, anxiety, trauma and being the victim. I have been asking all the right questions but to the wrong people, I needed to ask those questions to me and just be still. My voice has been covered up by my ego from pain, trauma, and it constantly telling me that it was right. My inner true self was being drowned out by the noise I would keep playing.

I have bought so much “stuff” to try and fill the hole, to make me feel connected to something or someone. I have heard continuously that I was already connected, I just never believed it because of the noise that drowned it out. All spirituality, was to me, revolving around fear…fear of God, fear that I wasn’t good enough, fear that I would burn in hell if I didn’t do exactly as other did. Fear that I wasn’t one of the “Chosen,” that I would knock on Heaven’s door and hear in the loud booming voice of God, “I do not know you.” Fear that I was inviting the devil in because I didn’t believe exactly like them.

I so longed to believe that God was love and was a part of me, or I a part of God- but I would cloud it with other’s interpretations of God and then make myself the victim, again. My demon is the monkey mind.

I believe there is a God, I believe that we are created by God, He or She. I see glimpses of God in nature, in my children’s smiles and their eyes, in my animals, and in those quiet moments that come to me sporadically. I have always attempted this journey (half-filled journals, self-help books and bibles/devotionals fill my house), then when it didn’t fix me quickly or stop the monkey mind, I would quit and validate that I am alone or not part of something greater than myself. Especially when it required me to BE STILL.

So for me right now, I want to Know God. I want to take this journey, I want to know peace, love and bliss. I am willing to let go, I am laying all my cards out and admitting my fears. I know this takes time and I am willing to do the work.

I know it is an inside job. God, can you hold my mind, heart and hand through this? Can you let me feel and know that it will be ok and that I will be ok?