Yes, you should love everyone and yes, you should be Jesus to people who have no one else stepping into that role but something needs to come first. You loving you. Someone told me to love God with my past, present and future. “How?” was my response. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. I could see why it was a good idea but couldn’t wrap my head around it, even if I could say the words, how could I ever truly believe them.

December 18th, I was on my way to the store to get stuff for my kids Christmas parties. I was talking out loud, like I usually do, to keep my thoughts straight and focused. I began a mental, emotional, spiritual exercise that I knew was given to me by God. An exercise that I will relay for the rest of my life. Mind truly blown.

I’m going to walk you through it. But it may not mean to you what it meant to me, it my not be the process that clicks with you but it changed me. It changed the way I saw myself and God and others. It was a total game changer in my relationship with God.

You see, my relationship with God has been surface level my whole life. I had made the decision to live as a believer when I was young, to bet all my chips that He was real and that my life lived for Him was better than not. However, there was a wall. I sometimes would question His existence in my head, sometimes I would feel Him with my heart but the wall was right below that, about where my diaphragm is. Right before I reached my soul. I am a visual person so for me the visual helps. I would periodically bump into the wall and it either scared me and I’d run away or it would be so painful I wouldn’t have the strength to address it. But 2017 showed me I needed to, I had to get passed the wall. It felt like life or death. Life on this side of the wall was grey, gloomy and purposeless. I imagined life passed the wall to be vibrant, joyful, and fulfilling.

Each stone in the wall was made up of a past experience, little bits of self-loathing and self-doubt, God-doubt, relationships gone south, every time I felt inadequate or incapable. I began naming the stones that made up this wall, the wall between me and God but also between me and my soul, my true self, the self God was preparing me to become, the self He had always intended me to be. As I named them I could feel them weakening, shifting. Through counseling, through prayer, through struggle, through Instagram, through Facebook, through podcasts, through books, through the bible, through moments, through feelings, through promptings, through talks, through sharing, through this blog I slowly began pulling and tugging. Until I began to see a small light shining through.

So this is your first step, name your stones. Name your wall. Heres some of mine.

Failure, college, loosing virginity, demolished friendships, drinking, anger, Mother, not feeling good enough to be a wife or a mother, feeling like a fraud, not making my degree work, saying too much, not saying enough, saying the wrong things, comparing, laziness, hopelessness, daily pain and chronic migraines, believing all the lies, manipulation, playing games, questioning God, self-loathing, assuming negatively, hating my looks, hating my weight, being out of control.

I began to see God teaching me, guiding me, threading me. Because a lot of what happened in my life that I wasn’t happy about, I did to myself, I carried so much blame and guilt. There are a lot of these I didn’t name until this year, I couldn’t, I didn’t know how but God was good enough to show me, to guide me to the places where I could see, to put people in my path that wouldn’t judge including my husband.

Second step: I apologized to myself, forgave myself, and accepted all of me. This doesn’t mean it was my fault or I am accepting blame, I am doing this for healing and healing alone. Take if further by dividing yourself up into Mind, Body, Heart, Soul. Take on each part as you apologize to another part, ask for forgiveness, extend love to each part. The more detailed you are ie “My mind apologized to my heart for not protecting it, for rushing past and dominating.” the better. Dig. Break wide open. Bare your mind, body, heart and soul and see them for what they truly are… Beautiful parts of you that have endured so much and are trying to do their best.

Steph 3: Live from here. From the place of forgiveness and love not the place of blame and shame. Choose, remind yourself of this place and come back as often as you need to. Done openly and honestly it is powerful.

***If you do this exercise, let me know in the comments what if did for you.