You Know Me

Thirteen days into the New Year and I’m proud of myself for remembering to pray every night before I fall asleep. Well, almost every night. And sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the prayer, whoops.

I find myself praying almost every night for God to bring me the man He has planned for me to marry. I know full well I am not ready at this particular moment in time to meet that man, maybe not anytime this year, or even five years. I have no idea what He has in store for me. But I know that God has him in store for me somewhere out there, hopefully praying for me as well.

I have come to notice over the years a pattern, which I’m sure many other women notice in time and either deny it or use it to change. I use my relationships as a form of dependency. I use them for constant attention (physical and mental), someone to run to when life gets hard, a form of temporary happiness no matter how long it might last. But that’s the part I always forget, that type of happiness is always temporary.

Someone once told me that every now and then someone comes along and fills the gaps in your soul that no one else can. Even now, as I lie in bed at night, I am asking for someone to appear to fill those gaps in my soul. Many of us spend the majority of our time and thoughts looking for that one person and thinking about how they will make us feel whole. The one person that can love us unconditionally, knowing everything there is to know about us, even the worst parts, and devote their life to us anyway.What we forget to acknowledge is that God has been loving us unconditionally since before we were even born. He is the One we should be asking to fill those holes inside us.

If you have a minute, go and read Psalm 139. Here’s verses 1-4:

“You have searched me Lord, and You know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise,
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down,
You are familiar with all of my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue,
You, Lord, know it completely.”

It’s a lengthy one, so I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version. God knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. And no matter how many rights or what kind of wrongs we commit, He loves us unconditionally. He is the only one who can truly fill those gaps that no one else can.

 

What a comforting thought, to think that the man of my dreams will just be the cherry on top of the Love I am already receiving. I would say I can’t wait to meet him, but I can.

 

Something Bigger

It is both depressing and exciting that I have had this blog for two years. Mostly depressing, especially since only two posts ago did I talk about New Year’s resolutions, and it’s already that time again. I had some really great advice in that post, if I do say so myself.

I’d like to change the theme of this blog from being a “diet blog.” I hate that it took me until now to realize how lame that sounds. Who wants to read about someone else dieting? I know I don’t. I would much rather the focus of this blog be about my journey of bettering myself. Isn’t that something we can all relate to? I hope that anyone reading this is constantly trying to better themselves, which is also a forever commitment, just like the forever diet (gag).

In the spirit of New Years, yet again this year I said I’m not making any resolutions since my list is always the same. Yesterday I caved and I made a list of 2016 Goals, and ways to accomplish them. Here they are:

 

1. Love God.
2. Love my body.
3. Love my job.

 

Really, the first one should be the only one and the rest will follow. The more shit that happens to me the more I find myself leaning on God for support. I should lean on Him no matter what is going on in my life, good or bad, but the bad always pulls me closer to Him and I am thankful for that.

It upset me a little to read my New Years post from last year, as I had successfully forgotten about all the shitty things that happened to me in 2014, since 2015 was worse. You never know what the future will hold, and a lot of crazy things can be packed into one year’s time. But instead of dwelling on the negatives, I want to acknowledge all of the positive things that resulted from 2015. As I said in my post from last year, there’s no such thing as a “New Year New You,” we are all the result of an accumulation of events that affect us. And each event, no matter how shitty, always has some sort of positive side or outcome. If anything, they cause you to grow as a person in some way or another.

In 2015, although my car accident affected me in a number of ways, I ended up healthy and fine. Not being able to drink for a month was a nice detox, and opened my eyes to other problems I needed to address. In February, I went for my property management license, which led to a promotion in March and put me back at my old property that I had missed very much. A slow but gradual downward spiral led to the end of a two-year relationship in September, at which time I turned to my family and friends for support, gaining so much more happiness and fulfillment than I could have expected from those relationships and conversations.

Ironically this new independence; being single and not necessarily looking for a relationship, and also being financially independent, has made me realize just how far I feel from God. When you realize you have to stop relying on other people and situations to make you happy, you find yourself relying on something bigger. This past summer something said in a sermon hit me hard. At the time I was extremely unhappy and couldn’t put my finger on why. The pastor said, “YOU are not in control of your life… Where will you find refuge? Where will you go?” I was so used to turning to my boyfriend at the time, and I knew in my heart that wasn’t forever. I totally freaked, I started crying in church (so embarrassing), and the worst part was I couldn’t identify where the freak out was coming from. Eventually I realized that if I stripped away all the “things” that made up the facade of who I was…my clothes, my job, my friends, family, relationship, reputation… If all those things went away and I had no one left but myself, where would I find refuge? I had no idea, and that simple thought is terrifying.

 

I’m not afraid of being alone, but I do fear being without God. Empty, purposeless, wandering blindly. This year I will find my path back to God and my true self. That’s got to be the best New Year’s goal I’ve ever come up with.