I Like It.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“No I’m just enjoying your presence”

Above is a conversation I had with my (old) manager, early last week.

 Yesterday my adopted ICT, Beth, asked me about loving myself, I did a rather horrible job of explaining my answer to her question. This was because I started talking about something else and ended up about a mile away from her question; she thought I was ignoring it; however I really HAD intended on bringing the two points together I just never got around to it. (I find I do that a lot). So here I will try to somewhat enlighten you all. J

 As I said in an email to a rather wise friend of mine late last week, “There is a new feeling in my heart. It’s calm, and for the most part has been for days, but it almost feels like something’s missing. There are things going on but I’m really not preoccupied by them.”  This is new for me, not bad, not unwelcomed, just new. My life was a constant hurricane last semester and somehow I think it got in my head that’s how life ALWAYS was going to be at the Honor Academy. But that isn’t true.

 Gauntlet took me back to last semester, my commitment, and my failure to live up to it during my first four months as an intern. I didn’t give the internship my one hundred percent; I was too caught up in ME and what I was going through. I grew, don’t get me wrong, I grew in HUGE amounts at rather pivotal points, where it was pretty much “learn this lesson, or go home”. But often I found myself failing to meet expectations, either mine, or one’s others had put on me, and I wasn’t okay with that, spent hours at night worrying about it, and fretting over what I was going to do differently. It turned into a vicious cycle of tears, and let downs, and letting people down, my heart was in the midst of a record sized storm.

 So this peace, this calm, this being okay with silence, is new. I like it, without a doubt, it’s just interesting, it’s new, almost…..foreign.

 For the first time in a LONG time, perhaps since I was truly a child, I love myself, down to the core. Okay so maybe not completely but on a deeper level than I remember ever loving myself before. I don’t know what did it, I don’t know if it was Christmas Break, relaxing, drinking starbucks, and playing my sisters wi fit, if it was the new year and the new opportunities it brought, if it’s the fact that I’m sleeping better, but whatever it was Jesus played a huge part in it, and I love myself.

 I don’t always understand myself though, I feel like I’m living my life with a new person, and discovering new things in my heart everyday. I’ve been paying more attention to, to things like mood changes, when they occur, what causes them, and truly figuring out WHY I’m having that emotion and making sure it is legitimate and not just a mask I’m trying to put on for one reason or another.

 This has been such a period of recuperation for me as well, I spent all of last semester trying to be something I wasn’t, trying to hold myself together when I alone couldn’t (and proved that more time than I can count.) I’m no where near as tired as I was last semester in the sense of needing sleep, I’m just tired of trying, I’m tired of using my energy to try to be something, tired of trying to prove myself.

Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God……..

That verse sums up my life right now. I’m being still and realizing and remembering that He is God, and I am not. And in letting God take HIS spot in my heart and life I’m finding it easier to love myself, because for the first time I’m seeing HIM in me.

There are times when I doubt, when my mood shifts a little and I realize once again that I’m not invincible, that I am human and Satan will attack me. Like last night – I promise you there is an epidemic of some sort of cold/fluness going around the Honor Academy right now…and I was walking back from the Admin building (after dropping off some food for Janell) in the freezing cold staring at the sky; for a mere second I wondered if this really was all too much, if this was all just some hoax, trying to trust a God I cannot hear, see or touch, but then under the east texas sky (please tell me how I’m still in texas when it’s this cold) a sense of peace returned to my spirit, a peace that somehow in an instance finally put all the doubts to rest.

I feel like I’m waiting on something, something big, I’m just not sure what it is, but for the first time in a long time it doesn’t feel the dreaded waiting, the waiting that makes my stomach hurt because I just know that something bad is about to happen. It’s more of an expectancy, an excited, for what’s to come.

I like it.