Why worry when I can pray? Why worry when I can safely forget because You—the God who knows, hears, and sees ALL—will and does remember?! Thank You, God, for this freedom. For this liberation. For this knowing. For this understanding.
Find your own Mrs. Smith if you don’t have one. Let them love you and pour into you and build you up. Let them love you with the divine love they hold sacred and near and dear. Let them show up for you when you least expect it. Let their divine love cover you and protect you and be kind to you. Let them be who they are so you can be even more of yourself, too.
I do not call it love when someone I’m dating neglects me. So why would I call it love when I neglect myself? Neglect is not love—not when it comes from others, and not when it comes from you.
This is why we keep losing ourselves in love: because we search for something outside of us that can only be found within. The more I love myself, the more I experience God. And the more I experience God, the more I experience heaven on Earth.
I do not call it love when someone I’m dating neglects me. So how can I call it love when I neglect myself? Love is not just what we feel. It’s what we do.
To me (and in my humble opinion it should be for er’body!), all of humanity is normal. After all, whoever God created in His image is ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ so who are we to decide who’s abnormal?! THE AUDACITY! When we say ‘___ is not normal,’ what we’re really saying is ‘___ is different than me,’ and that difference makes them abnormal. Ah who say so?!”
I’ve been torn down, misused and abused for long enough and it wasn’t until I began to change my words and speak lovingly to myself that I began to live so different. I’ve seen for myself the power of words. The power of love!
I learned that others need the hope I carry. In my short life, I have seen that my faith is exponentially bigger than my fears. That I have hope in my future because of the God who was with me in my past. And people who are experiencing the same challenges I once did but have not yet overcome need to hear my voice. They need to know that breakthrough is not just possible—it’s probable.
I made it through because I always make it through! I am resiliency personified. As I look back at a journal entry from June 2024, I am stunned by the growth. Tears well and fill my eyes because, holy moly, I can’t believe this is my life! This is the life God and I co-created this year.
And for too many of us, they turned into self-hatred so deep, so consuming, that it felt like an unbearable truth. But what if I told you that everything you’ve believed about yourself—the shame, the doubt, the fear—was never true? What if I told you that you were made in love, by love, for love, to love? That the world doesn’t get the final say—God does?
