Sit with your demons, so you can ask them to leave
Somewhere I once read that if something keeps showing up in your life over and over, it’s because you are not paying attention to the lesson. First it starts out as a little twinge in your gut, which we have learned to often ignore. Then it shows up as a flick of an ear, followed by a slap up side the head, until eventually God has no choice but to throw up a brick wall. I have been told I am unyieldingly stubborn, so it comes as no surprise to most that I have hit many brick walls in my day 🤷♀️🤦♀️🙄😂
This quote I had snapshotted from somewhere really hit home for me. For the first time in my adult life (21 years), I have had nothing but myself and four walls. And by nothing, I literally had an air mattress, about 30 plants, and 1,000 books for the first 3 months of my new journey 🤷♀️ Ya know, just the necessities 🙄🤦♀️😂I found myself in a constant struggle to determine if those four walls would become my prison or my freedom.
When people say silence is deafening, they are right. It is the hardest thing in the world to sit with yourself and get real about the things you do and don’t like about who you are. To assess without blame to others where you have prevailed and where you have failed. To stand bare in front of a mirror and critique how my body has changed - no longer the vision of youth. I sag a little more here and may have a bag or two there, but I also feel proud of all this body and I have been through together. We are a team, and I am proud to call her mine. Of course I wish I could change this or that, but overall I am thankful for this vessel that has stood up to so much of the shrapnel of life.
I have watched myself stare into my own soul through my own eyes while I beat myself up one moment and love myself the next. I have watched myself cry so hard my body slithered to the floor because I simply couldn’t bare the weight of my pain; and then I watched myself pick myself up and go about my day, holding the door for someone or listening to the cashier at Target - no one the wiser of all I’ve been through. It is through these moments I began to realize how much strength we have when we simply feel we cannot take one more step; and then we do.
I learned to sit with my demons in the silence of the dark night and to forgive my sins. I made peace with my failings and gave myself grace for not knowing then what I know now. Above all else, despite my angry outbursts, my frustrated tears, and my moments of childish pleading and begging, I have learned to love and accept God on my own terms. We have come to a mutual understanding, he and I, which has lead to an agreement only we can appreciate - we love each other and that is enough 🙏🕊✌️💕
No one promised this life would be easy, and no one promised it would be fair. It’s been full of some amazing highs and some gut wrenching, heart breaking, soul crushing lows. But one thing I know for sure, without a doubt, is that it’s worth every breath.
Life is. And, for me, that is enough 💝🤘