What I learn from my children V

When I look into the eyes of this little precious creation I just see total peace.  Peace with every single thing and person around her.  There is no questioning her own worth and when I show her, her little face in the mirror a big smile lights up her face and she totally adores the little face staring back at her.  When I look at my two daughters and their total love for almost the whole Universe and everything in it, I wonder to myself when will their perceptions start getting warped?  When will the glasses they view the world through start getting tainted.?  I wonder to myself where did I loose it?  And I guess it is inevitable that one day they too will get hurt by a mean action or a mean word or two, that will leave them a little broken.

In my opinion your relationship with yourself is one of the most important relationship you will have in your life.  No matter where you go in life you will never get rid of yourself and you will always take you with you.  I have learnt a few things and one thing I know is that your relationship with yourself will affect every sphere of your life.

Relationship is something heavy on my heart as relationships have the power to break or make you.  The opinion you have of yourself affects all your relationships—with God and other people.

This blog entry does not have a gallery of facts or absolutes, but rather a few things I have learnt along the way.  I am a person who indeed has struggled with relationship with self and still do at different intervasl of my life.  So I am not an expert just a real person, who lives in the same world as you and someone who has experienced a distorted image of self. I have found many "symptoms" in my life over the past few months that would suggest that I was/am a little bit broken, but luckily for me God can mend all broken hearts all I have to do is give Him all the pieces.

"I wander lonely as a cloud

That floats on high over vales and hills

Continuous as the stars that shine

I’m always at the end of a never ending line

I go to bed with joy and hope

But always seem to be the joke

I wonder if there’s someone out in the world

Who can take away my pain and hurt

That floats in my heavy heart

And makes me feel like a heap of dirt

I wander lonely as a cloud

Looking at myself

Trying to feel proud

Of the image I know as me"

        -          Ellouise Wood (13^th June 1994)

Yeah that was me, quite the poet hey?  I was 16 at the time of writing that poem and unbeknown to be that is the birthday of the guy that I would later call husby:)  I adapted this poem from William Wordsworth in 1994.  I have to laugh a bit when I read it now almost 17 years later.

The above depicts exactly what I thought of myself in 1995 at the time I surrendered my heart to my Creator. 

You see the enemy gets me thinking that I am nothing at times and that I can't possibly amount to anything. Experiences with people and actions of others have a great deal to do with my relationship with myself at times too.  When I allow the enemy to have my mind in such a state he has me where he needs me to be, KNOWHERE!!!

Do you really know yourself?  Are you comfortable with who you are? Have you spent your whole life trying to live up to someone else’s expectation or trying to be like someone else? Is there some aspect of your personality or your physical appearance that you find hard to accept?

What do I have to continually realise in order not to believe these lies is remind myself what the greatest commandment is.  That can be found in Matthew 22:36-39:

“Teacher which is the greatest commandment in the law?  Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself”

• This piece of scripture tells me that I need to love God first. Second I need to love my neighbour as I love myself.

• I believe that the world is in the state that it is in as a result of people not loving themselves correctly.  Because as you love yourself you will be able to love your neighbor with that same love.  We don’t love ourselves so we don’t love our neighbour.

I also have to decide to constantly work on my personal wholeness. Myself and Niel host a pre-marriage course called "One", which is a phenomenal course if you intend on getting married.  A lot of what I am going to say in this part comes from one of the lessons we did in this course because it doesn’t only apply to the relationship of marriage but to every single relationship you will enter into throughout your life.

“The best gift you can give anyone is your wholeness?”

I first heard that statement coming from Ps Gary Rucci’s.  That statement shook me and turned me around.  What does he mean by that?  How can my wholeness be good for someone else.  Well that statement has become one of my heart’s anthems.  And I have seen at times how my brokeness causes a lot of damage.

• When you are a whole person, you will enter into whole relationships, you will be able to be you without fear of rejection, you won’t settle for second best, you will see the best in others and you will live a full life.  A whole person does not need another person to complete or fulfill them. 

• Whole people are secure in who they are.  They appreciate compliments and encouragement but don’t depend on these things for self worth.  Whole people seek friendship and companionship from those who encourage them to grow and challenge them to succeed.

• Relationships for whole people aren’t built on self – they are built on love, challenge and mutual respect.  The relationship should encourage both parties to personal growth. 

I also have to continually remind myself of what God thinks of me. There is no one else like me.  God has given me a distinctive personality.  When I express love I do it in my own unique language.  God has given me specific gifts. Do I know myself well enough to know what each of these is?

God created me for a purpose.  I have unique God-given gifts and abilities to help me fulfill my purpose in life.  No one else can do it for me.  It’s my responsibility to find out how God made me and to function as I was designed.

Every time you relate to someone else you do so through the uniqueness of who you are.

Who we are is so closely related to our perception of our selves.  Our identity is so important that it is addressed in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible:

Genesis 1:26-27 (NIV)

Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.  So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”.

Wow, we were created in GOD’S IMAGE.  Just that alone should revolutionize the way I think of myself.  I have the image of the CREATOR OF THE WORLD.  Difficult to get my head around that at times.

I need to believe God when He tells me this! He will NEVER lie to me. But the devil will lie, steal and deceive me. Don’t allow the devil to pull you down to his level. He is the master at deception.

So I have decided to start believing what God says about me and getting  around people who are encouraging and who can be a good influence in my life. I have made a resolve, ONCE AGAIN, to be at peace with myself and love this creation God created.