Becoming the Strong Independent Woman

Another, longer, ramble. All these ideas (I think) will make more sense when I put them into the context of my own life at the end of this mini-series thing. Again, please share your thoughts at the end!

 

Oh my.

Need.

We are always told that we as women feel the desire to be wanted, needed and loved. From my experience this is true, but it is not as strong or as negative as the world makes it seem. We are also told that in order to give love and receive love, we must love ourselves “truly.” This is also true and not as difficult as how the world makes it seem. We are told that in order to overcome these desires we must become a “strong independent woman who don’t need no man,” seemingly ignoring these desires or selfishly getting them fulfilled in the here and now with whomever tickles our fancy.

 

There is a great DIY, self-help culture lately, especially with YouTube vlogs, which makes it seem as though there is a great journey to reach the point of self-acceptance and where your desires are met. I think the testimony culture within churches escalates this as well, we believe that if we do not have an instantaneous revelation or turnaround that we are on the road of a long journey to freedom. Is there no middle ground? Is it possible to reach this point without the 5 key steps, long wrestling match with doubt and constant stumbling?

I was watching a spoken word piece yesterday that spoke of the guilt of enjoying the physical interactions that we know do not fit in with how we wanted our life’s story to pan out. The lady in the video said rightly, this guilt should not be felt. We were designed to enjoy physical touch so we should not feel guilty about enjoying it or craving more of it, but we should recognise the right time and place for it. Just like within a relationship there are wrong times for PDA and right times and places to enjoy intimacy, in life there are right and wrong times to be enjoying physical touch.

How would love work without vulnerability? If we didn’t have that desire to be needed and wanted would we even go looking for love? We are told that as women we use sex, romance, dates, physical touch and all those things to gain love and that this is a bad thing. Now I’m not advocating going and using all these things to fill the void that can only be filled with love but I am going to say that I think that we, especially us Christian girls, view this desire as a negative thing where it is a natural, beautiful thing that if channelled correctly can enhance love.

As with anyone else, I have made my fair share of mistakes and continue to, so this is written as much to encourage myself as it is to do so for you. It is really hard writing this without including my story as that’s how I processes best, so I will include my journey in the next post. I need to exclude myself though so that I have a set of raw truths to come back to myself.

It all comes back to what I said in my last post, love is a choice that we make, and a choice that must be carefully timed. We must be content without love before we are ready to receive love, otherwise it will become like a drug and we would not be able to function without it. If we approach love as a whole, full person then we will have love to give and not have to rely on another person to fill our empty void.

Okay, so we have the need to be needed and a void that cannot be only filled with love but these must be met and fulfilled before we are ready to receive or give love. How does that even work!? The need we have to feel as though someone needs us and to feel completely, unconditionally loved. No mention of romance there. You can be needed by many people or groups in your life, whether it’s as simple as your dog really needing you to survive, your little sister needing you to hold her while she cries, your gym buddy needing you to keep them motivated to get up at 6am for a run, or your clients at work really needing you, your need to be needed can be met in another capacity if we focus away from finding a significant other.

Non-romantic love can fill that void in the same capacity. The most fulfilling way to satisfy the need for love is learn to love yourself. It is a great cliché, but it is so true! Loving yourself is being content with where you are, accepting where you have been and being determined to make yourself and your future great.

Connecting this back to my original question that started this blog – is this either a journey that lasts a long time or an instantaneous revelation or is there a middle ground? I believe that there is no need for it taking a long time to figure out, however long it takes you to believe that you are loved, needed and desirable and adjust your outlook and behaviour to that is all it takes. There will be no definite finish line as self-worth is something we have to decide daily, but I do not feel as though the journey is quite as long as we sometimes make it out to be.

These needs are only human, but believing that they control us and determine our sense of self-worth is perfectly Freudian. You are needed, loved and wanted in many capacities. Recognising this, deciding this and walking it out on a daily basis is the way that I am finding works to change our mindset to become that “strong independent woman that don’t need no man.” Waking up each morning and realising that you are wanted, needed and loved, complete without a man by your side yet completely and utterly desirable will set you free from being controlled by the world telling you that you need to have your desired fulfilled by a man in order to be happy.

These desires were not built into us to control us, as this normally brings heartbreak and a lost sense of identity. Instead, we were meant to control them in order to and depth and intimacy to our relationships in a safe and healthy way. Without proper control and understanding of these desires we end up in a string of moments to try and quench the here and now. Having a good grip on them will deepen and make a true love more beautiful. Not true love in the Disney sense, but a true love in the sense that your connection with this person is multi-faceted and that it is based on mutual respect, trust and a desire to benefit, grow and bless the other while protecting your heart. A love that you will remain thankful for every day, even if it were to end.

To love is a choice we make

Okay, so there will be a theme for the next few posts (shock horror, I am actually structuring my blog!) around love simply because I think about it a lot in many different ways and it has been on my mind a lot lately. So here is post number one, it is a ramble of musings that I scribbled down tonight.

If we align ourselves with God and pursue an intimate relationship with Him, He will bless what we do because we will align our actions to His will out of a desire to want to be with and like Him. When we understand who we are and whose we are, everything we do will be to strengthen that and to empower the person it is that we believe we are. If we understand that we are great and destined for greatness, we will align ourselves with people that reflect the same.

The whole thing of "it takes one to know one," works in a positive way too - we recognise what we are, in others - it is the principle that discipleship and replication in leadership is based on. This is why we take the love that we think we deserve, because what we want to grow or shield within ourselves is what we look for in people that we believe have potential to grow with us and extend us, people that will both take from us and give to us.

That balance must be maintained in our relationships so that we do not start viewing the other person as a projection or turn them in to our parent or source of fulfilment. It is like stretching dough, as you pull one side you must pull the other so that you do not end up with a lump of dough ripped off from a flattened piece that takes work to kneed back together, but rather a whole piece that is perfectly flat. In the same way that you are stretched you must stretch the other person and vice versa. It is a balance that must be consciously maintained.

So we choose who to love and how to love them. Our culture tries to tell us that there is a formula to finding someone and a way to love them - that we have a certain "type" and while it is true that there are certain personalities, characters and habits that we will be good, better and best with whilst other pairings will be toxic, I truly believe that we could make most of our failed attempted relationships work.

A little more tolerance, a little more patience and a little less eagerness and rush and I believe that we would save a lot of heartache. If we were more deliberate in our choices of who we loves and how we loved on a daily basis we would have many more beautiful stories to tell with more happy tears and blocks of chocolate and tubs of ice cream shared.

Hope that made some sense! Please someone drop me a comment and let me know if it did and what your thoughts are! xx

Made to Bloom

If you can, listen to this while reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPeudF7tcD8

I am supposed to be studying for finals in my first semester at university. I am supposed to be memorising the rules and equations of STAT110, but it is really killing my brain and I realised on Sunday that I have not written in ages. So here I am, on a study break from doing what I detest, doing what I do best instead. Or at least, what I think I do well. I will keep it very short though as I really do need to study.

At the beginning of the year I attended a student camp at my new church. I was going through a period of immense struggle after moving away from home and university life being rather lonely if you’re underage and not into clubbing as well as working through great personal issues. God used this camp to extend a metaphor that I had received late last year when preparing to graduate high school, an acorn.

My mum bought me Max Lucado’s “The Oak Inside the Acorn” and an acorn necklace for graduation and I loved the metaphor of the story. In a nutshell, the story is about a little acorn whose oak tree mother always said to it that “Inside you is a great oak” and the acorn’s journey of falling from the tree, being planted and never understanding its potential because it kept comparing itself with the other plants in the garden. Eventually the acorn found its purpose.

In the period of life that I am currently in I am constantly having to fight to find my purpose, my dream and my goals in life. God is revealing to me slowly that the expected nature of having a five year plan on what to study, when you are going to get married and settled down, where you are going to live and what job you are going to do is not how my life is panning out. It is more like a series of steps and discoveries. At the moment, I have just been planted. My dad said to me when I left home, “The work has been done, the soil has been prepared and the seed has been planted. It is now time to grow.” What I did not realise it what it requires of a seed to grow.

I may not be 100% scientifically correct, but the metaphor works for me, so here goes. When seeds are planted their only environment is the soil immediately around them, there is nothing but darkness and dirt. They rely on a farmer or water source to water them and on the soil to provide them with nutrients. Without the right environment their life will not begin. Even in the right environment though seeds need to break before they can grow (here is where my biology is a bit fuzzy). An acorn is encased in a hard shell and in order for it to be able to sprout roots and grow it has to break open this shell and then the cells of the seed must divide like crazy to develop – right? Well, that is how I see it anyway. From what I can imagine this period of breaking and dividing in order to grow would be rather painful if I were a seed and that is what I felt was going on in my life at the time.

This picture taught me to put my pain into perspective; all the pain and breaking off of dead cells was to lead me to be able to grow better and stronger. It also taught me that I need to rely on other sources to carry me in times of pain – in my case God was my gardener, and life was my soil providing me nutrients through His word and my family and loved ones. I had to learn to rely on them if I wanted to be able to grow to see the garden that I was planted in in order to understand my purpose.

I am not saying that I have it all sorted or that since discovering this metaphor that life has become easier, I still stumble and heaven only knows that I really fail at life some days. The important thing is that when I take a step back to breathe that I can put it all in perspective and accept it for what it is.

I cannot wait to break through the soil and bloom!

GUCCI Girls' Night

About this time last year God lead me to host a girls' night at my high school and focus strongly on identity. My heart broke when I looked around me and within myself and saw the lack of identity or identity being determined by the wrong things. Tonight we had our girls' night and I am sitting here blown away by how amazing God was and how much of a success the whole evening was! We called it GUCCI, Girls United in Christ-Centered Identity, and that is exactly what happened. By the end of the evening pockets of girls were getting together to talk about the real things that we face as girls and getting around one another to support each other while we all enjoyed the girly things in life while eating cupcakes and painting our nails. We really united as girls in Christ.

During the evening I shared my testimony with the group, the reason why I started this blog as a means to relieve my heart and so I thought it appropriate to share it on here too. So, if you are reading this please (if you know me) read it in my voice, but a very emotional voice and when you're about half way down imagine that I'm almost crying. That way you can sit in the auditorium with me and enjoy girls' night too.

Am I special? Am I good enough? Am I beautiful? Do people like me? Am I loved? Will I amount to anything? Is there even a point to me being here? These are just a few of the questions I began to ask myself as a junior high school student. Unfortunately, the answer I decided to most of these questions was no. No, I am not special, good enough, beautiful or loved. People do not like me, I will not amount to anything and there is no point in me being here.

 This was all because I was looking for my acceptance and worth in all the wrong places. No, I was not a rebel nor did I venture off the rails; I was actually more behaved and sheltered than I am now. I was just looking to my friends and my sport for my identity. I am a people’s person, I am happiest when I am with a bunch of people having fun and therefore looked to social interactions for energy.

 I am not going to go into complete detail but I’m quickly going to take you down memory lane and introduce you to the Petro of days gone by to help you see the full picture. As a toddler I was a very happy child, always running, smiling and laughing. I was however, very shy. Mum often tells me about how I used to cling onto her and hide behind her leg when we were in public and would never talk to people I did not know well.

 This was my reality up until the age of eight, well I had given up clinging onto Mum but I was still otherwise the same. At around the age of eight I began to realise that the tactic that I had adopted to make friends, being loud, silly, sarcastic and rude to the boys, was not working for me. Sure, I was making plenty of friends, but even at that age I realised that I was losing myself; it just wasn’t me. As soon as I changed tactic though, I began having daily fights with my friends; which turned me into a really grumpy, rude person.

 I spent most of the next three or four years on my own or floating between friends. I cried most afternoons and was always unhappy. It was around this time that I discovered that I was pretty alright at sports and began to gain recognition from my peers in that. I based my identity and happiness in sport, so I became super competitive and always compared myself to others. I met Christ at the end of year six and the bitterness in me began to fade. It took about two years for the change to fully set in and for my peers to begin recognising the change in me. I began to happen on the social scene and my netball began to take off big time; people wanted to know me and wanted to be my friend. This gave me such satisfaction and became an even more crucial part of who I was. I was not happy with myself unless I was successful and social.

 I lived this shallow existence through Middle School but reality kicked in towards the end of year nine. Year nine and ten were hands down the worst time in my life. I lost four extended family members in quick succession, all very suddenly and unexpectedly. My friends all abandoned me and I lost all sense of confidence. I remember praying often as I lay in bed, “Jesus, I cannot do this anymore. Please, just don’t let me wake up in the morning.” I contemplated ideas such as self harm or anorexia because I needed to be able to control something in my life and viewed myself as overweight compared to the girls that I went to school with. I saw myself as worthless, unloved, and unwanted and a failure. I did not fit in anywhere and was stuck in a mild depression.

My saving grace was my family, my sport, and my Saviour. My parents picked up pretty quickly that I was not myself and they came alongside me to support me. Instead of food and pain being the things that I controlled in my life, my sport became that area of control. I played in such a way that I could control the game and the movement of my opponent. I turned to writing that year, I bought a notebook and began writing my emotions down in poems. It soon became pretty addictive and I wrote on anything I could my hands on, notebooks, napkins, worksheets, paper towels, receipts, folders, whiteboards, absolutely anything and everything. I am a greatly emotional person so being able to express my emotions in a sometimes exaggerated form but in a safe place helped me deal with the stress in my heart. My poems were mostly all very dark and sad until I began to turn to God. I realised that I did not want to die, I did not want to hurt myself or make myself sick because when it came down to it, I enjoyed being alive and being with my family. I started ending my poems with a prayer or statement of hope. Sometimes this hope was false but I wrote about how God was going to pull me out of this situation and restore me as a declaration. I knew in my heart that He would pull through and save me because I had felt Him change me four years previously.

 Like my change in year six, my restoration from depression and looking to others for acceptance was not immediate, it took some time. I only really became comfortable in my own skin last year, but in the mean time I stopped looking to people and started looking to God. I developed somewhat of a “And what?” attitude towards people’s opinions. Although they still matter to me very much, I started realising that I cannot possibly please everyone and there will always be someone that I will disappoint and at this stage if it is not someone who I respect or look up to, I don’t really mind what they think of me. The old thing of, “Those that matter don’t mind and those that mind don’t matter” began to sink into my brain. I realised that wanting to change for others was pointless, I just lost myself in the process and trying to live up to the expectations of others just left me feeling empty, but God thought I was awesome – He chose to spend time with me 24/7 and call me friend. He made me the way I was and although He is constantly working in me to help me become more like Christ, when He made me He stepped back and saw that I was good. I was good enough for Him. I was special to him. I was beautiful to Him. I was loved by Him and therefore it didn’t matter if people liked me. I will amount to something because He gave me unique gifts and promises me a prosperous future. There is a point to me being here because He gave me a purpose to wake up in the mornings. And do you know what the best part about that is? It is the same for every one of you too; He loves and cares for you just the same.

Perfection Perception

I was cleaning out my room these last few weeks – it was quite a mission… and I stumbled across one of my many notebooks. In it I discovered a poem that I felt compelled to share here because its message rings very true with many teenage girls. I have no idea when I wrote it, but it slapped me in the face when I read it.

 I, like most teenage girls, have had my fair share of struggles with body image and self esteem. I believe that it is a daily struggle for most of us, as we stumble our way through puberty blues and try to develop an image for ourselves that won’t repulse us every time we look in the mirror. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that goes through the daily “Oh my word, what is that!?” when I look in the mirror, the “This definitely makes me look fat” and the “How is she so flawless.” But then there are those days where you look in the mirror and think “Dang girl, how are you still single!?” No? Okay, maybe it’s just me… I began wondering why it is that we can love ourselves one minute and hate ourselves the next and this poem answered my question this morning. It’s all in our perception of perfection. 

I have a really healthy relationship with my mirror, seriously it’s distracting because it’s right next to my desk, but I still need the reassurance from family and friends that I am alright. I caught myself looking at other girls’ facebooks who have around 155 likes on their profile picture and seeing that mine only has 15 and wondering what I am doing wrong. Then I realised that I don’t really care what people think of me online, it doesn't change what I look like and I don’t want to change my pictures to change what I look like either. My older sister is drop dead gorgeous; she has a model’s build, flawless skin and a beautiful face. People are constantly telling me how stunning she is and that became another stumbling block for me, that people would never tell me that I’m pretty and only compliment my clothes if she was wearing them. But I again realised, their words aren't going to change what I look like either and that when my idea of perfect beauty looks in the mirror, she sees a list of flaws too. We look to someone and see perfection, yet they still look at themselves and see 'not good enough.'

I realised that in order to look pretty, you have to feel pretty and in order to feel pretty you have to think pretty. Whoa okay that was badly written, I confused myself. Let’s try again. In order to look and feel pretty you have to be confident in your skin and work with what you have. I am by no means over my body image struggles, but I have reached a point where I have stopped comparing myself to other girls and look in the mirror and only look for good things about myself. I never point out my flaws to myself anymore, I know what they are already, I just remind myself about the good bits. I have learnt to look at myself through God’s eyes, because when He made me “He saw that it was good” and change my perception of perfection. 

So without further ado, here is the poem and an amazing song by Britt Nicole that covers the same idea. 

Perfect in Him

Her bony finger,
Clawed deep into,
Her matted hair. 

Her sharp cheekbones,
Smeared damp with,
Her salty tears. 

Her steel blue eyes,
Fixated strongly on,
Her tired reflection. 

She sighs deeply,
As she peers at what,
She believes to be ugly. 

She can’t bare to,
Look at this daily,
She wants to change. 

But when He looks,
From the other side,
Of societies mirror,
He sees beauty,
Freedom,
Love,
Acceptance,
He sees perfection. 

She takes a step,
Outside of her body,
She looks through His eyes. 

She begins to look,
From the other side,
Of societies mirror,
She sees beauty,
Freedom,
Love,
Acceptance,
She begins to see perfection. 

She couldn’t bare to,
Look at herself daily,
She wanted to change,
But now she sees His perfection. 

On her own she was blemished,
In Him she is perfect. 

Britt Nicole - Gold

May I Have This Dance?

I love dancing, from a young age I was always dancing through the house making up my own dances. I took ballet for eight years and absolutely loved it! Since then I have had to give up ballet in favour of netball but still love dancing; I hear random beats or music in my head and I’ll just be dancing in the middle of nowhere while talking to someone. No judging, I’m a unique child. Often when I am feeling really romantic I put on slow romantic music, such as Taylor Swift’s ‘Tim McGraw’, and slow dance with myself in my room. Again, no judging, I’m single so I have no one to slow dance with if my Dad’s not around – and I am not sure he would want to slow dance to Taylor Swift after watching ‘A Walk To Remember.’ Anyway, I love slow dancing but have no partner; that is the important bit.

I want to focus on two pictures that have meant so much to me this year; one is the idea of ‘Dancing Backwards into the Future’ which I got from my sister’s best friend, and the idea of dancing with Jesus, which I got from a young mum at church.

‘Dancing Backwards into the Future’ is the idea of being lead by God into the future. When you partner dance, the girl dances backwards as the boy leads. The girl cannot see where she is going, she can only focus on the handsome (hopefully) boy in front of her who is guiding her so that she does not crash into anyone. He leads her step for step. This is what life with Jesus is like; He leads us into our future, He can see where we are headed when we cannot, He leads us step for step and will never step on our toes. All that we have to do is keep our eyes on him and enjoy the dance.

The idea of dancing with Jesus is a literal, physical thing. When I am feeling lonely, when I feel as though no one loves me, or when I wish I had a boyfriend, I dance with Jesus. Because, let’s face it, we all have those days when, no matter how secure we are in ourselves or how content we are being single, we wish we had a dance partner. Well, I have learnt from a young mum at church in those times, to dance with Jesus instead of looking for someone else to dance with. That is when I put on my music and I begin to waltz, pretending I have someone guiding me while I talk to Jesus. I literally dance with Jesus. I can honestly tell you that it works, you feel loved and cherished.

So, in a literal sense, and in a spiritual sense, I try to dance with Jesus as often as I can. I try to spiritually dance with Jesus non-stop, that he is guiding me through my daily life and I physically dance with Jesus whenever I feel lonely or romantic. The great thing about dancing with Jesus is that whole thing of ‘I wish this song would never end and I could dance with you forever…’ is true, it is actually possible. The Song of Salvation never ends, once you accept Jesus’ invitation to dance He dances with you forever. He is the best dance partner, He is gracious, He is gentle, and He is loving and protective of you. I have never seen Him but I can imagine that He is the most handsome possible dance partner ever. Plus, having Him as your dance partner sets your standards high, so you will not settle for just any dance partner, you will only say yes to your Prince.

That is my short-ish blog for now, I have another idea that I will write up soon. I am thinking of writing one about True Friendship (Don’t fret, I will think of a more creative name) and one on Prince Charming (Once again, the name will be less cliché). So for now, good bye and thank you for leaving a comment on my previous post anonymous, you made my day. J So with that, good day, I love you all! xxx

Time to say hello to goodbye.

As 2012 ends and 2013 begins, we enter our annual short-lived 'can-do' season. We begin to see the faults in the theatre company we call 'The World' and the flaws in the characters we are playing, and we decide that this year we are going to fix everything. But we blindly fall into this trap every year. This is not going to be one of those empty New Year's posts about how I plan to loose weight, be successful and be a better person or an anti-New Year's post. Instead, I would like to look at saying hello to goodbye.

I have had my fair share of goodbyes in life, so much so that I hate saying hello in fear of goodbye. It does not stop me from saying hello though, nor from crying when goodbye comes. But alas, the annual goodbye to the good times and bad has come and it has made me think of what to do with last year now that I am standing in a new one.

Throughout last year God kept reminding me not to look back, to keep my eyes focused on the road ahead of me, even if I cannot see the finish line. Me mother was often reminding me also to 'Run your lane my Poppie.' I realised a while ago during a wonderful run on the beach that in order to do both these things, I had to stop comparing today to yesterday. Coming into this year I realised that not looking back and running my lane meant not planning this year according to last year and not comparing them either. Ever.

I do not mean to forget last year entirely, to do so would be foolish. We must learn from last year's mistakes, enjoy the memories of the good times - they will be our fuel in the tough times - and grow from last year's challenges. My "Word For You Today" echoed this idea when it spoke about letting go of last year's grudges and sins and moving forward in peace, happiness and right-standing with God. So that is my challenge for 2013; not to look back but to run forward in peace, happiness and right-standing with God. But I do not want it to be like the stereotypical New Year's Resolutions that only last three weeks; this is my day-to-day resolution as I say hello to saying goodbye once again.

Walking into 2013 I plan to be at peace, happy, be right with God, work hard in chasing my dream instead of waiting for it on a silver platter, and to not daydream. The last one is already proving a challenge... And, of course, to actually remember about my blog...

Happy New Year everyone! Remember to forget about the negative events of last year, cherish the precious times, remember those past, embrace those here and be excited for those coming this year. As we walk into a new year, remember to smile frequently and laugh easily, cry when necessary and love unconditionally. Don't look back at last year, keep your eyes set on the path ahead and the One who is leading you down it. I pray that 2013 will bring you all joy and blessings, bond old friendships and bring new ones. Looking forward to 2013 with all you beautiful people! ♥

So, if you are reading this, and I can see if someone has been here, please let me know what your New Year's Resolutions are, I would love to hear from someone other than my devoted family who have to comment or face my wrath. You can drop one as 'Anonymous' or create an alias. If  my sister can do it so anyone can!

Oh, I have totally revamped my blog for 2013, new metaphor and all! Here goes to running the Race in my lane in 2013!