Tag: faith

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As You Love Yourself

He answered: "’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’" Luke 10:27 NIV

I have been thinking about this since before I went to bed last night. I have been thinking of how to share this…whether to do an Instagram post or break my Lent fast from Facebook because it seemed so important to share, or whether to simply share it with my girlfriends as I have been doing the last few days. For preservation of anonymity, I decided to do what I do best..write.

After bible study, I had a conversation with a friend that turned to the topic of my singleness. He asked, why don’t I have a boyfriend? My reply was the truth, in that I wanted to detox, release all the baggage of relationships past, release all of the things that have happened to me over the years, be the best me I could be, and do what God asked me to do, but do it for myself. I admitted I wanted to be in a relationship, loved being in one, but I wasn’t ready for it. As I got off the video, I realized that this was something much more than that. Back in 2009 after my transplant, one of the things I asked of God was that He teach me to love others the way He loved me and to love myself that way too. So as He spoke to my heart last night and reminded me of that, I realized that I was loving myself the way God wanted me to love myself by choosing to remain single and celibate until I meet my husband. I was loving myself so that I could love my neighbors as myself. Let’s be real, how can you love other people if you don’t love yourself?

I tried writing this last night before I went to sleep…but delirium and tiredness hit me heavy. As I woke up with this on my mind, it kept coming back to me that it would have been impossible for me to fully love someone, my future husband for example, if I continued to carry around all of the filth and garbage from the past. I realized that I could not give God or him all of me in holding on to what BoBo did to me or mistakes I made. I realized I could not love Marquita and thus I could not love others being who I used to be. Yesterday, I shared with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and undoubtedly the world how I woke up feeling beautiful. I never in my life experienced that feeling…and I didn’t have on any makeup or lip gloss…just a smile and my clothes that are almost two sizes too big in some areas lol. I realized that of all of the things I have gone through in the last 8 months of this Esther purification process (reply if you’d like more details in how God has been transforming me), the greatest lesson has been in loving myself. The products of this journey so far include knowing my worth, being able to be brutally honest with myself about the mistakes I have made, listening to and learning from others, and just embracing me for everything that includes…in essence, loving me.

I think of this scripture and it dawned on me how it is apparent that there is a lack of love in the world, and that the enemy’s attempts at perverting everything God has created are in actuality, working–but I digress because God already has the glory from this. Hate is apparent in every area of our lives, from global interactions to day-to-day driving experiences. People are isolated and cut off from real interactions with others, they flip people off when driving, or in my case, threaten to ride around with a bucket of rocks to beam at people every time they do something I don’t like on the road, lol. But this is not how God intended us to be. I have learned that it is in loving God–submitting, being obedient, and trusting Him, having faith in every single thing He says–that I learned to love me. The things I have done have been unorthodox, even strange (but hey God is extraordinary, if Naaman dipped seven times in the dirty Jordan and was healed of leprosy…then my celibacy and singleness are mere tasks for the greater glory He will soon reveal).

You cannot love yourself walking around in shame. You cannot love yourself walking around dragging generational curses (which, YOU have the authority to condemn and break, Isa 54:17) or by allowing yourself to be oppressed by demonic influences (let’s be real…lust, perversion, whoredoms, addictions, depression, and bondage define the world we live in…and it was only after being delivered from it that I recognized its hold on me, but more about that to come soon). You cannot love yourself ignoring the truth. The truth is, it has been in my obedience and willingness to trust God that I have learned so much. I have lost so much ‘weight’ both literally and spiritually, because I got fed up with not loving myself and going back to why this and why that, why isn’t my life going the way I want it to go. It all started because I loved someone else so much that I wanted to forgive and be a better woman… But there was a greater gift in store for me, because this journey has been so beautiful–I finally love who I see everyday looking back at me, unconditionally. This journey has opened my eyes to seeing the beauty in others, and also in being loving to others even when the old me could give two…craps about even speaking to people. The greatest commandments–to love God and to love others as ourselves–can change the world if practiced. It is my hope that in my sharing this process, and eventually the whole of it with you all, that you will go against the norm, against society’s demands of assimilation, and be the agent of change in your sphere of influence. I am sure your journey to true self-love–how can you love yourself if you don’t love God–and love of others will be different from my own…but stop resisting it and just be! Love your neighbors as you love yourself…love yourself today!

"I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another." John 13:34 HCSB

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Who Gave You the Gavel?

Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a log in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the log out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:3-5 HCSB

If you know me well enough by now, you know I have a deep abhorrence of hypocrites. (That’s just my being fancy and saying I don’t like judgmental people, lol). I pray daily for an open mind, and that God shows me the beauty in all things and people. Over the years I have grown to despise the tradition of religion and sought to understand God for myself. I recognized along the way that there are many people that put God in a box and so if you do not fit in that box, something must be wrong with you. After coming to terms with my calling, I struggled hard with this. Modern day preachers and prophets don’t fancy a woman speaking her views on God, let alone teaching others about God. Along with this, I have learned that if you do not look a certain way, talk like this or dress like that, you will garner a certain amount of sideways stares. I am about as different as they come, well not all the way. I have several tattoos, dress very fashionably at times, unique at others, love love love heels, and shy away from anything screaming tradition. So from this I am sure you know my plight, lol.

I love this passage because it reminds us to look first at ourselves. I’ll be the first to admit that I found flaw in everyone, having grown up to pick and point out other people’s flaws. That would be alright for a while, then when I got by myself and looked at myself, I would tear myself apart too, mainly because of the insecurities I had developed out of the things I had experienced growing up. Out of that birthed the need to protect and defend others, and to stand up for myself. The first person to say something disrespectful to me they would get their own tongue-lashing back, when I got older and stopped holding my tongue so much. Then as I grew tired of having to defend myself all the time, I realized the true source of the problem was the enemy and his efforts to discourage me from truly embracing what God wanted for me, which is relationship with himself and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I will not sit here and write that I have a clean slate for my past. I have done my share of wrong, made my share of bad choices. I have hurt people and myself. But the one thing I have learned is that God forgives. Just as He is our ultimate judge, He also loves us so much that He will forgive our wrongs without need for anything in return. We are not the judge and jury (law school joke haha) so what gives us the right to slam the gavel on others? Now, there is a difference between bringing an issue before your brother or sister in Christ and talking about them and casting judgment. But the bittersweet part of all of this is that we can only learn the difference when we let God remove the blinders from our eyes that hide our truth. Don’t you want to see with clear vision? Remove your plank today and really see yourself as you are.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:1-2 NIV