WE ALL LOSE FIRST

I used to hate my story. You know, the one that explains how you got from where you were “back then” to “where I am today.” I hated mine because I hated my traumas, my mistakes. I hated my decisions and the way people who were hurt by my lack of maturity at those times in my journey. But I’ve learned after so many years that hating my story doesn’t bless anyone. Hating my story doesn’t help anyone to find healing and restoration in themselves from theirs. It’s just conflict; an internal conflict of my own that tries to avoid accepting the hard truth that no one’s story starts off with victory. We all have to lose, if not once then sometimes many times over. We all have to lose so we can win.

STUCK WITH THE PERSON IN THE MIRROR

Win what? Ourselves. The only person who we have for sure at the end of every day is ourselves. We can hope our partners will choose us the next day and the day after, but that’s their choice to make. But us, we are stuck with ourselves until our death bed. So while we wait for that moment to eventually arrive, are we hating our story because of how ugly the darkest parts were, or are we choosing something better than self-hatred?

Maybe we choose self-love. Perhaps with some reflection and hindsight we can choose to learn that our mistakes were blessings in disguise, provided at some point in time by God—who is outside of time—and that He ordained our mistakes so we could learn from them and bless others from a place of humility and self-compassion. We forgive ourselves, we let go of those moments in time where we really screwed up, and we love on others the way we need to love on ourselves.

If we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love others. We can’t give what we don’t have, right?

BEAUTIFUL, HORRIBLE STORMS

Do we have love for the ways our lives have gone? No matter how they started out or on what bumpy road they tumbled or horrible of a storm they’ve sailed through, they’re worth something significant in the long-run. Sometimes, at special integers in our lives, we can look back and see how some of the events that played out weren’t so bad not because of what happened once the storm cleared, but as a result of the storm itself. In others words, if not for the “storm,” we might not have made the decision we did to change this or that about ourselves, or to go here or there and meet so-and-so and make better choices that ended up showing a part of ourselves to ourselves that we didn’t even realize was there because the storm hadn’t revealed to us yet just how capable we really are of making better choices.

See? Storms lead to lessons, and those lessons humble us and make us better people. No matter how bad the storm that led to the lesson, we still learned and we still made it through.

That’s more important than the storm’s ugliness. You know, I love a nice thunderstorm. It’s beautiful, all the different shades of dark and light grey, the clapping noise in the sky that rattles the windows, and the relaxing sound of rain downpour as the sky has a good cry. I love it. Storms are sometimes scary, but they’re beautiful. So too are the things we have to endure to become who we are today.

COME ALIVE ON THE INSIDE FIRST

Why waste time hating our stories instead of loving who we’ve become as a result? Why choose to see what horrible things we’ve done rather than simply live differently as a result of having lived in a way we hadn’t learned from yet?

If we live in regret and shame and isolation because of fear of rejection and abandonment, we never actually live. We die inside, and our lives die short as a result too. But we don’t have to go about it that way. We can just live here and now, and not die so soon. We can live on the inside first, and then sequentially on the outside through our actions and expressions and choices that are shown by what we do with our time in this life.

WE WERE MADE LOVABLE

What are you doing with your story? Does it help to see yourself more fully, authentically, and more lovingly, or are you hating yourself so the other people can’t beat you to it? Let’s not surrender our peace of mind to people’s judgment. Let’s live like there’s no tomorrow by loving who we are today. God made us lovable and proved how lovable we are by sending Jesus. Jesus was the incarnation of the reason why we are so worth it to God. We are the most precious of all creation; we are made in His image.

Spend your time wisely by loving yourself as a result of how much love you have been given from God through everything you’d ever experienced up to now. You have such potential because He implanted it into the very makeup that is the soul inside of you. Use it. Grow into it, embrace it. Love and be loved. Forgive and have peace. Be blessed, and bless others.

That’s why we’re here.

Photo by Pauline Heidmets on Unsplash