The freedom to be yourself comes with a lot of responsibility. I am completely accountable for my actions and reactions. Learning new ways to react is proving to be a difficult task. The relationship with my parents is changing. The relationship is a living organism and I have decided to change what I feed it. No longer will I be a gluttoness people pleaser. I am on an emotional diet and reducing the amount of parental calories into my day (I know the cheesy analogies are too much, but hopefully still paint a clear picture). The right balance of mom and dad intake will be limited to phone calls and occasional gatherings at a place of my choosing, but it cannot be my childhood home. I revert back to a defensless eight year old girl who resents her parents for not being the all knowing and all powerful people I thought they were. I lose all sense of who I am and what I believe in. I become spiteful to my father and angry with my mother. I have yet to work out all these emotions and feelings. I do love my parents. Let me make that perfectly clear. It's just I have to learn how to love them differently, now that I am no longer in need of them to sustain me. I want them in my life, but the realization that I don't need them...seems harsh, but still true.

It makes me feel ready to take on the world. It makes me believe more and more I am who the Creator said I am and will be. The future of prosperity, joy, miracles and promises are right at my fingertips. I just have to let go of my past perceptions and let them turn to dust. The hopeful confidence that stirs in my soul is growing stronger with every day. God is faithful, so very faithful I don't even have words to describe it. Now that I am seeing myself more in a godly way, I am now actually believeing the promises God has spoken to my heart and not letting anyone, especially my family, the people I hold dear to me, tell me any different. Being bold takes a lot of courage.

Value

Self-worth is not just a feeling we have. It is something we must practice daily. When we are born, we mimic and play with the world around us and learn from our parents. We copy what they do. Even the abstract things. We as children don't really understand abstract concepts, but we use them none the less to make sense of the world we inhabit.

As an adult, I am trying very hard, consciously making the effort to undo the decaying and moldy layers of my self-image. I have a hard time seeing myself the way my friends and family see me. This means that I have an even harder time seeing myself the way God sees me and wants me to see myself. I have avoided church and "Christian" hubs so to speak, because I have been in such a place of despair and self-loathing that church just made it worst. Let me be clear, I don't mean people, I mean church. The organization of church uses fear to make me feel bad about myself. Is this intentional? I don't think so, but we all grow up and become programmed to see and think about things through a certain lense, from a certain angle, that it's hard to readjust and remove the dirty and scracthed ideas that seem to carry on for generations at a time.

I am learning to let go of my parents as people I can depend on to tell me how valuable I am. I don't mean that my parents don't think I am valuable or worth loving. However, they have dirty and scracthed lenses just like me and I can't count on them as dependable to tell me who I am and who I should be. It's this letting go, and grieving for what I thought I knew as true and actually starting to practice the art of valuing myself on the same level that God values me. I am obviously valuable or Christ wouldn't have given His life for me or anyone. It is a practice that is painful and silly and requires me to look in the mirror and say out loud all the things that God sees in me as good. It requires me to see the good things that have been placed inside of me. It makes me see myself as valuable jsut because I exist and that is enough for Jesus. So, it should be enough for me.

I long hard lesson and tough look at myself, but necessary.