I've heard people say that at some time or another in their lives they've given too much to someone, gotten hurt or taken advantage of, and that they'll "never do that again." I'm here to tell you, "yes, you will do that again." And if you don't, you just might be missing out on something great.
I've done that time and time again. It's not that I don't learn from my experiences, or that I don't see it coming. It's not that I'm that naive or short-sighted, or that you are any of those things either. Speaking for myself at least, I am a "heart-thinker". I lead with my heart most times, and I tell my brain to take a back seat. While that may sound ill-advised, I don't regret it at all, even though it has caused me pain and sleepless nights. What it doesn't cause me is regret. Because at least when leading with the heart, you lead with love, and love takes you where logic cannot possibly go.
Logic tells you with certainty what can and cannot be done, while love tells you anything is possible. While that may sound "head in the clouds", sometimes that's exactly what you need to do to get something you want. Or someone. My passionate and diligent heart is why I can keep going when things aren't going well anywhere in my life. If my brain was in charge, I would be in some type of psychiatric facility. You might be laughing, but it has a grain of truth for me. Looking at my life in a logical way, things don't look that great on paper. Starting with my medical situations (plural), my fears based on the last year's events, being healthy more than 2 days in a row, reaching any kind of goal I set besides finishing household chores, and sometimes just wondering why things are the way they are. The list goes on, and it gets too repetitively stuck in my head sometimes. But what my heart tells me is "Keep going. There is more to this." So I return to my "heart-state", where I can be free to feel kindness, hope, positivity, love, and the strength I need to keep on keeping on.
Vulnerability comes with a big price tag, and it's just one of the many drawbacks of thinking with your blood-pumper rather than your noggin. It forces you to allow others to come fully in with the possibility of destroying what you are giving out. I admit this has happened to me more times than I can count. I fully invest in someone with honest intentions, caring about them, wanting good things for them, and sometimes I find out they are more interested in either what I can give them or how I made them feel, rather than actually caring about me. And I know this by how easily they can let me go, yet how much it hurts me when they leave. Yeah, that one really stinks, but it is part of caring about people. It's the bad side of using your heart to lead you around. Kind of like using a braille menu at a toxic waste dump. It has its drawbacks. I admit I don't recover as well as I should, but I make no apologies for that. I never apologize for the way I feel or for hurting when something feels real to me. In a world of "fake feelings", and "fake posts", I find it refreshing when someone says, "I'm hurting and I need someone to care." Well, it's rare, isn't it? It shouldn't be. Might be why mental illness and suicide are so frowned upon these days. No one is allowed to feel what they feel without someone judging. Be happy and "get over it" and everyone loves you. Have a rough day or a negative feeling, and everyone leaves you. That's pretty backwards if you ask me. But nobody did. That was free.
I don't regret my feelings or saying what I need to say when I need to say it. I can sleep at night knowing I tell people how I feel about them or how they made me feel. Leading with the heart leaves nothing unsaid. Leading with your brain constantly tells you to suppress your feelings, but your feelings will always be bubbling to the surface! They will keep you up at night, I promise you. It doesn't mean every feeling you have will lead you to what you want, or that it will be returned, or that expressing yourself will always lead to peace. But in the end, I can't have peace if I let my heart down by not listening to the nudges I get inside it.
I know Who leads my heart, and I know who gets in my head, and I choose to follow the One who leads me to choose love even though it often comes with pain. I pray for the ones who are still in my heart but have chosen not to stay in my life. It's funny how that works when you are a heart-driven person. I can't stop caring about them even though they hurt me, and I still leave the door open. That's what it means to love. If my brain was in charge, I would forget their names forever. Choose your heart. It knows better.
Friday, August 25, 2017
Thursday, August 17, 2017
When You Know Your Worth
When you know your worth,
you'll know when it's time to let go....
Of people who let go of you first.
of habits that no longer serve you positively.
Of time-wasting actions that lead to a purposeless existence.
Of negative thoughts that leave your heart in pieces.
of memories that only serve to remind you of your mistakes.
of behaviors that don't match your values.
of words that damage others' hearts.
of carelessness that leads to another's heartbreak.
of hatred and unforgiveness that only holds back your love for others.
of self-destruction, self-hatred, self-pity, self-focus. of self.
of opinions that are meant to tear another down instead of listen and share.
of putting yourself above everyone and everything else.
of listening to all the wrong voices and forgetting to listen to the One. And your own.
of lies you've been told your whole life. You won't believe them anymore. You know your truth.
of what everyone else thinks of you. You know who you are now. Be proud.
Of your failures. They are your lessons you won't repeat the same ones twice.
Of your shame. There is so much good in you and you know that now.
Of your guilt. You have forgiven yourself and moved on from the past. It's over.
Of your need to control everything. The outcome isn't dependent on how good we are.
Of your need to control the actions of everyone else. Most times it's not about us anyway.
Of needing to be right all the time. You are ready to learn from others now.
Of thoughtlessness. People who feel worthy want others to feel worthy too.
Of requiring a "title", an income, a wedding band, or whatever else you think you need to show "worth" to the world. No. You are worth so much more than anything you could ever own or be.
I felt compelled to share a post about self worth today, because I feel we all struggle at some point or another with this, and it filters into our lives disguised as other issues. I've heard other people say not-so-nice things about others being "insecure" and "that's why they do this or that". I don't know. I don't think that's very nice or accurate most times, unless we're analyzing someone professionally or know them personally. I think people just struggle with knowing who they are and how much they are loved. People do things because they don't feel they measure up in life, maybe because they don't feel they are worth more. If only all people knew...
My mom and I were talking the other day and she mentioned how she still gets teary-eyed when she thinks about God giving His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. How we can be sinners still, and He would still do that for us, not because we are worthy of it, but because He loved us that much. So, what's our connection?
We don't get to decide if people are worthy or not before we decide we're going to love them. God told us to "love one another" for a reason. He knew we were going to be a judgy bunch! He knew we weren't going to like each other sometimes and maybe he could foresee what we were going to do in this crazy world, and knew it would only get worse. But if we knew how much He loved us, then maybe we would be able to then share that same love with someone else? Yes. That's why you need to know your worth. Because if you walk around feeling like you don't measure up and you're just a big old mess of junky failure, then how are you ever going to love anyone else with the kind of love God asks you to?
I want to love better and I don't always see my own worth, but I'm learning to let go of the things that hold me back and don't allow me to fully walk in the light God set for me. I want you to know that you were made for love and you are worth far more than you can imagine even if your feelings don't line up with that sentence! Even if your circumstances don't match. You are what my kids used to say. "You are a masterpiece made by God. There is no one like you and there will never be another you ever again!"
Be blessed...
you'll know when it's time to let go....
Of people who let go of you first.
of habits that no longer serve you positively.
Of time-wasting actions that lead to a purposeless existence.
Of negative thoughts that leave your heart in pieces.
of memories that only serve to remind you of your mistakes.
of behaviors that don't match your values.
of words that damage others' hearts.
of carelessness that leads to another's heartbreak.
of hatred and unforgiveness that only holds back your love for others.
of self-destruction, self-hatred, self-pity, self-focus. of self.
of opinions that are meant to tear another down instead of listen and share.
of putting yourself above everyone and everything else.
of listening to all the wrong voices and forgetting to listen to the One. And your own.
of lies you've been told your whole life. You won't believe them anymore. You know your truth.
of what everyone else thinks of you. You know who you are now. Be proud.
Of your failures. They are your lessons you won't repeat the same ones twice.
Of your shame. There is so much good in you and you know that now.
Of your guilt. You have forgiven yourself and moved on from the past. It's over.
Of your need to control everything. The outcome isn't dependent on how good we are.
Of your need to control the actions of everyone else. Most times it's not about us anyway.
Of needing to be right all the time. You are ready to learn from others now.
Of thoughtlessness. People who feel worthy want others to feel worthy too.
Of requiring a "title", an income, a wedding band, or whatever else you think you need to show "worth" to the world. No. You are worth so much more than anything you could ever own or be.
I felt compelled to share a post about self worth today, because I feel we all struggle at some point or another with this, and it filters into our lives disguised as other issues. I've heard other people say not-so-nice things about others being "insecure" and "that's why they do this or that". I don't know. I don't think that's very nice or accurate most times, unless we're analyzing someone professionally or know them personally. I think people just struggle with knowing who they are and how much they are loved. People do things because they don't feel they measure up in life, maybe because they don't feel they are worth more. If only all people knew...
My mom and I were talking the other day and she mentioned how she still gets teary-eyed when she thinks about God giving His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. How we can be sinners still, and He would still do that for us, not because we are worthy of it, but because He loved us that much. So, what's our connection?
We don't get to decide if people are worthy or not before we decide we're going to love them. God told us to "love one another" for a reason. He knew we were going to be a judgy bunch! He knew we weren't going to like each other sometimes and maybe he could foresee what we were going to do in this crazy world, and knew it would only get worse. But if we knew how much He loved us, then maybe we would be able to then share that same love with someone else? Yes. That's why you need to know your worth. Because if you walk around feeling like you don't measure up and you're just a big old mess of junky failure, then how are you ever going to love anyone else with the kind of love God asks you to?
I want to love better and I don't always see my own worth, but I'm learning to let go of the things that hold me back and don't allow me to fully walk in the light God set for me. I want you to know that you were made for love and you are worth far more than you can imagine even if your feelings don't line up with that sentence! Even if your circumstances don't match. You are what my kids used to say. "You are a masterpiece made by God. There is no one like you and there will never be another you ever again!"
Be blessed...
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Salt Shakers on Broken Hearts
I have written and deleted three posts so far, and have had about three conversations on this topic in the last week. I've seen quotes, read blogs, and heard comments enough to make me realize I need to tackle this topic for me and maybe for you. Maybe you're hurting, maybe you will one day be in these shoes. Maybe you will know me a bit better after you read this post!
Grief is a lot of different things to me, but what it hasn't been is cathartic, at least not yet. The tears are not helpful. Yet. I don't feel healing. Yet. Grief is a slow, agonizing process, particularly when grieving the losses of more than one significant person in my life. Still trying to navigate the loss of my brother and realizing the relationship with my nephews will be limited at best, realizing I will never see or talk to my dad again, and then losing my brother-in-law, who I was just beginning to feel closer to, which is not easy for me. Pulling the rug out from under me doesn't even come close to describing the shock I find myself in some days when I drag myself out of bed still. There are no words to describe the stillness I feel when I think. Really think.
Add to that a mom and a sister who have found themselves widowed just 2 months of each other, and we just kind of cry to each other and have strange conversations about how everything is breaking at once. Cars, furnaces, freezers, etc... just making it screamingly obvious that they are alone. I am alone in a way too, without my dad, and yet it is hard to bring that up when they have lost their precious husbands. Grief can be isolating even among grievers. We share it, but it comes packaged so differently that we feel guilty for our own feelings sometimes.
We try to rely on outsiders, but when it comes to broken hearts, as I tried to explain to my sister today, "some people are salt shakers. And our hearts are open wounds. But some people are balm to our spirits, and those are the ones we try to hold onto, but they are few and far between. Grief isn't for the weak. Not everyone can take this journey with us." We don't want to find out if someone is a salt shaker or a balm, so we don't want to rely on anyone anymore. Grief is private that way. We honestly can't handle any more hurt than we already have. I don't think a lot of people really get that. The ones that do are angels sent from God, I know.
The way I know this is from being hurt by a friend who I thought would understand and be there for me, since this person was there for me through my brother's loss. I should have known better, but I give people way more chances than I should. I hurt myself in believing in people long after I should give up. When I shared a memory of my dad, this person chose not to respond. When I noticed this person didn't bother to even ask how I was doing, I guess for fear that it would incite an unwanted conversation, I should have known not to engage then too. The signs were all there. Salt shaker. Salt shaker. This person is going to hurt you at the hardest time of your life, and you are allowing it to happen. Stop. Stop. But I wanted so much for this person to care as much as they did when I lost my brother because it helped me get through it so much then. Much like I guess a drug would soothe a pain. We rely too much on people and that's why they let us down. The person who once kept me smiling when all I could do was cry is actually one of few people that makes me cry today. Ironic, maybe, but so predictable as I think back now.
I almost wish this person was reading these words, but it wouldn't change anything anyway. In trying to confront concerns in the past, I became misunderstood. I became seen as someone who was argumentative, who caused "stress" and became an "obligation" to fulfill. How silly for me to have taken those words to my heart. I let that opinion, based on selfishness (looking clearly now), break my already broken heart. I apologized for things I didn't do, in order to repair a friendship that honestly didn't really exist. Because if it did, I wouldn't have been treated that way in the first place. People who claim to know you and care for you just don't pull that kind of switch.
Because someone who truly calls you a friend would never want to hurt you with those kinds of words. And someone who has also lost a parent sure knows how it feels and would feel honored that I shared a memory of my dad, and would have acknowledged that. Someone who valued my friendship would have asked me right away how I was doing and would have signed their own card and made sure it went to my address and not my in-laws. Seems like a silly thing, but when you really care about someone, you make sure you cross t's and dot i's, am I wrong? I was wrong to expect a person who called me a stressor to actually care about what was going on in my life at all. That's what was wrong. Me. Too much hope, expectation. Giving credit where it's not due. I can see where I could stress someone out who doesn't want to be bothered anymore. Once I filled the original void in that person's life, I was really just in the way!
I'm just being honest, because that's all there is. Obviously I'm only sharing part of the story, but I share it as an example of my own failings. My failings to overlook the shortcomings of others, to not give grace, to not forgive, and to not be able to ignore the bad behavior of others. At least at this particular period in my life. I don't feel strong enough to do any of that right now. Grief is messy. It has weakened me, and it has made me angry.
And yet I know God will use all of this. Bad emotions, bad circumstances, unreliable people, tears and all, because I'm sure it has something to do with wanting me to grow. I just can't lie and say I have everything figured out and put in a nice neat box because I don't. I'm dealing with a lot of depression, a lot of disappointment, and it would be a whole lot better and easier if some people would just not be jerks, and God would just be an audible voice right now! That's the honest-to-goodness truth. And if grief has done anything for me, it has given me the ability to say exactly what I feel, because what have I got to lose? I've already lost so much, I don't care if I lose more friends if it's over speaking my truth.
My husband calls that feisty. I've always been a firecracker...
Grief is a lot of different things to me, but what it hasn't been is cathartic, at least not yet. The tears are not helpful. Yet. I don't feel healing. Yet. Grief is a slow, agonizing process, particularly when grieving the losses of more than one significant person in my life. Still trying to navigate the loss of my brother and realizing the relationship with my nephews will be limited at best, realizing I will never see or talk to my dad again, and then losing my brother-in-law, who I was just beginning to feel closer to, which is not easy for me. Pulling the rug out from under me doesn't even come close to describing the shock I find myself in some days when I drag myself out of bed still. There are no words to describe the stillness I feel when I think. Really think.
Add to that a mom and a sister who have found themselves widowed just 2 months of each other, and we just kind of cry to each other and have strange conversations about how everything is breaking at once. Cars, furnaces, freezers, etc... just making it screamingly obvious that they are alone. I am alone in a way too, without my dad, and yet it is hard to bring that up when they have lost their precious husbands. Grief can be isolating even among grievers. We share it, but it comes packaged so differently that we feel guilty for our own feelings sometimes.
We try to rely on outsiders, but when it comes to broken hearts, as I tried to explain to my sister today, "some people are salt shakers. And our hearts are open wounds. But some people are balm to our spirits, and those are the ones we try to hold onto, but they are few and far between. Grief isn't for the weak. Not everyone can take this journey with us." We don't want to find out if someone is a salt shaker or a balm, so we don't want to rely on anyone anymore. Grief is private that way. We honestly can't handle any more hurt than we already have. I don't think a lot of people really get that. The ones that do are angels sent from God, I know.
The way I know this is from being hurt by a friend who I thought would understand and be there for me, since this person was there for me through my brother's loss. I should have known better, but I give people way more chances than I should. I hurt myself in believing in people long after I should give up. When I shared a memory of my dad, this person chose not to respond. When I noticed this person didn't bother to even ask how I was doing, I guess for fear that it would incite an unwanted conversation, I should have known not to engage then too. The signs were all there. Salt shaker. Salt shaker. This person is going to hurt you at the hardest time of your life, and you are allowing it to happen. Stop. Stop. But I wanted so much for this person to care as much as they did when I lost my brother because it helped me get through it so much then. Much like I guess a drug would soothe a pain. We rely too much on people and that's why they let us down. The person who once kept me smiling when all I could do was cry is actually one of few people that makes me cry today. Ironic, maybe, but so predictable as I think back now.
I almost wish this person was reading these words, but it wouldn't change anything anyway. In trying to confront concerns in the past, I became misunderstood. I became seen as someone who was argumentative, who caused "stress" and became an "obligation" to fulfill. How silly for me to have taken those words to my heart. I let that opinion, based on selfishness (looking clearly now), break my already broken heart. I apologized for things I didn't do, in order to repair a friendship that honestly didn't really exist. Because if it did, I wouldn't have been treated that way in the first place. People who claim to know you and care for you just don't pull that kind of switch.
Because someone who truly calls you a friend would never want to hurt you with those kinds of words. And someone who has also lost a parent sure knows how it feels and would feel honored that I shared a memory of my dad, and would have acknowledged that. Someone who valued my friendship would have asked me right away how I was doing and would have signed their own card and made sure it went to my address and not my in-laws. Seems like a silly thing, but when you really care about someone, you make sure you cross t's and dot i's, am I wrong? I was wrong to expect a person who called me a stressor to actually care about what was going on in my life at all. That's what was wrong. Me. Too much hope, expectation. Giving credit where it's not due. I can see where I could stress someone out who doesn't want to be bothered anymore. Once I filled the original void in that person's life, I was really just in the way!
I'm just being honest, because that's all there is. Obviously I'm only sharing part of the story, but I share it as an example of my own failings. My failings to overlook the shortcomings of others, to not give grace, to not forgive, and to not be able to ignore the bad behavior of others. At least at this particular period in my life. I don't feel strong enough to do any of that right now. Grief is messy. It has weakened me, and it has made me angry.
And yet I know God will use all of this. Bad emotions, bad circumstances, unreliable people, tears and all, because I'm sure it has something to do with wanting me to grow. I just can't lie and say I have everything figured out and put in a nice neat box because I don't. I'm dealing with a lot of depression, a lot of disappointment, and it would be a whole lot better and easier if some people would just not be jerks, and God would just be an audible voice right now! That's the honest-to-goodness truth. And if grief has done anything for me, it has given me the ability to say exactly what I feel, because what have I got to lose? I've already lost so much, I don't care if I lose more friends if it's over speaking my truth.
My husband calls that feisty. I've always been a firecracker...