On Thoughts & Scars.
‘If I keep on doing the things that keep on bringing me pain, there’s no one else I can blame if I’m not happy.’ Kirk Franklin
I have a habit of living in my head for more times than not, I tend to dwell on moments and thoughts of different shades, oftentimes they leave me stuck in a variety of feelings as I play back moments over and over again, relieving, changing, hurting, hoping…
The other day I asked myself, what are those issues that leave me feeling unworthy, unheard, and unvalued?
Do I want to think of these for the rest of my life?
What work do I have to put in so I don’t end up in them again?
What insecurities did I fail to deal with that let words thrown at me and toxic thoughts settle?
What was I feeding on?
We can agree that the comments that echo our insecurities are the ones that hurt the most.
How do we battle some of these thoughts and echo’s?
- Talk back to those thoughts echoing wrong words spoken. We need to learn to speak good words over ourselves as we constantly remind ourselves of who and whose we are based on the word of God.
- Find the root causes of those insecurities, those symptoms and address them.
- Propose to be better. Our identity is in Christ and He has equipped us to be and do better.
- Begin to incubate hope intentionally. That can be done through putting up little sticky paper/ posters of scriptures and words that stir up hope in places where they can easily be seen.
- Listening to sermons that feed hope.
- Listening to people we respect helps, and if they are saying things that are not incubating our hope, we don’t need to let what they say settle in us.
- Reading the word of God brings the ultimate change. 2cor3:18.
- What boundaries do we need to put in place? Do we need to let go of certain relationships that are hurting us? In letting go of certain relationships that have lasted a while, the fear of loneliness can set in, but in time, we wouldn’t be as lonely as we thought we would be. When we are intentional about becoming a better version of ourselves, relationships that would be worth it would come around.
In the moments when we are going through things, It might be hard for us to see how these things are working for our good. In confronting our scars at those moments, we may not see the wisdom gleaned, lessons learned, and compassion that should have been meted even to ourselves. It’s beautiful to say things in hindsight, and that’s okay because observing things in time is oftentimes a great eye opener to the bigger picture.
Our natural inclination is to create a villain, hold on to hurts and meet people at their own level of petty especially when we feel we have been wronged. It can take a moment to come to a conclusion of forgiveness or compassion.
We need to remember that the people we call toxic are people needing healing, just don’t let them pour into you or let the words and actions they pour settle inside of you.
Our lives are not cartoons or animations, we are all in this life trying to find a meaning with the childhood we’ve had, the environment we grew up in, life’s happenings, the brokenness we have experienced.
When we encounter people, we need to realize that they are speaking from their own stages of brokenness and healing.
When we spend precious moments wishing them evil, thinking of what we want to go wrong with them, we forget to think on what we want to go right with us.
It takes a lot of energy to wish harm on someone.
Nonetheless, after all is said and done, dare to be true to yourself, dare to show up even when you have fallen countless times.
There’s a version of each one of us that we are yet to behold, and there are times when we would have those moments of pain, doubt, hurts and questions. The plan is to keep our eyes and minds open to see and to achieve that.
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Credit: Kirk Franklin’s Wanna be Happy.
Sarah Jakes on women of Impact.
