Truth is, I don’t know myself at all. Or rather, I don’t know myself as much as I thought as I did, which is weird because one should fully know their self, right?
Wrong.
To an extent, maybe. But I think you are only able to fully know yourself if you step out of yourself. Or if you are opened up to yourself. It reminds me of why I never go through an essay I have written alone. I would usually send it out to people to look through it for me because I noticed at some point, I would read through my works and not find a single mistake, but the moment I asked someone to look at it for me, they would point out the undotted i’s and uncrossed t’s.
I think the average human believes they are good and very decent.
But I would like to ask you this: if you were given the opportunity to be in a relationship with yourself right now, would you take it?
Wait, wait.
I mean, if you were to be opened up to yourself — with the insecurities, dirt, false pretense, the real you, the one that no one else apart from God sees— would you still date yourself?
Because my answer just went from yes, um, duh! to I don’t think so.
I have this habit of asking God to speak to me right before studying the Bible. So, one night, I asked Him as usual and I started reading. It was great — until I burst into tears. I’m willing to bet that God had a small smirk on His face when He spoke up, You asked me to speak to you, so there you go. It was Romans 6, and I realized there has got to be so much rot inside me behind all these great things I think I am.
Listen, the idea of marriage used to sound very unappealing to me, but few months ago, God Himself started teaching me about marriage. One of the things He opened my eyes to is the fact that relationships usually serve as a form of mirror for yourself.
A lot of us think we’re perfect until we have to make room for someone else in our hearts. We have to live with them, we have to be open and vulnerable.
And I think relationships in general, reveal.
You think being jealous could never really be you until your body starts doing you somehow when he’s having a conversation with another girl. You think you’re a hard guy until you’re waiting for her texts and being the corniest you’ve ever been — your main gees are even calling you a simp. You think you don’t have anger issues until your friend or partner does something that triggers you or leaves you irritated, and you’re shocked at the kind of words that leave your mouth or can’t believe the content of the thoughts in your heart. You think you’re not proud until you can’t make the first move to apologize because you believe you were right, and so you would rather go three days without speaking as opposed to just communicating your concerns or annoyances and patching things up (okay, from first hand experience, I know that this isn’t always black and white, but in the context of this post, you know what I mean).
Today, I’ll let you in on my love life.
I used to think I was decent, until my relationship with God started two years ago. I am now faced with my inadequacies; things about myself that I didn’t even know or didn’t see as a problem.
Like how inconsistent I am. How I tend to think for others. How I compare myself with people. How selfish I could be. How my mind works overtime and doesn’t know when to slow down. How difficult I could be sometimes too.
Having my eyes opened and becoming very self-aware started to affect the way I saw myself. Worse, I started to think this is exactly how everyone else saw me. I felt myself shrink daily and become a lot more uncomfortable with myself.
There came the thought: How, then, will someone be able to love me if I’m this horrible? I thought about love and the way I would like to be loved. Fully. Completely. Understanding that I am very indecisive and it shows in the littlest things like spending close to twenty minutes picking the colour of a journal no one might ever see. Knowing that I have a weird fear of trying new things and would rather do the same, old thing. That I have a tendency to go quiet for a while when I’m upset.
But I had completely missed the point.
Because the idea behind God showing my inadequacies to me wasn’t to make me think less of myself, but to show what He was going to help me work on in order to be a better person and bring me an inch closer to Hiss likeness. I realized this one day when I was hanging out in my room and He said, “I’m not here to show you your adequacies and leave you to figure it out. We’re going to deal with them together.”
A relationship with God always transforms. It happens from inside, and I think there is so much beauty in that. It reveals you to yourself and helps you unlearn every faulty logic or belief. Our desires change. Our relationships change — it’s the healthiest it has ever been. There’s less drama, and more grace.
It makes me see things in a whole new light and makes me wonder why I never thought of it before. It opens my eyes to the fact that maybe, just maybe, being anything less than what He wants me to be is not the way to go. And just thinking about it, no. No, I wouldn’t want to date myself right now. Where would the urge to want to do better come from, then? I don’t want to be comfortable with what I am at the moment.
I want more, not less. Complacency isn’t attractive, either.
I’ve realized that transformation comes with spending time with God and letting the Holy Spirit do His thing. He transforms us until we become nothing short of desirable. So I’m not here to tell you that I have things figured out. Neither am I here to recommend a list of songs that evoke self-love like I think my fourteen year old self would have definitely done. I’m here to say that I’m still in the process of transformation and learning, and I hope that as transformation and renewal keeps happening, I become not just desirable to anyone, but also desirable to myself.
