I gasped for air like the first breath after being released
from a strangle hold. The once dark 
sky was bright with pure light. Still
breathing deeply I looked around me. The last thing I remembered was my hands
holding a bottle of bitter lies in my hand instead of my shield and sword of
truth. I had been yelling words as equally as bitter as the lies I was
consuming. My hands were empty. I glanced around the ground around me to see if
my weapons were nearby. As I did, a pair of hands reached out to me. Looking up
I found myself gazing into beautifully fierce green eyes. He held my gaze as I
took hold of His hands. He helped me to stand on shaking legs that felt so
strange and foreign to me. “Beloved, tell Me the Truth.”
I broke and purged before Him. Every bitter lie I drank was
suddenly lying before me on the ground. He held pure Love to my lips and I
closed my eyes as I drank deeply. Suddenly I was in a strong embrace. All
around me voices were lifting me up in love and in prayers. Hands were tenderly
pressed against my back, my head, my arms, holding my hands. I realized that I
was in the midst of my tribe, holding tightly to one of our leaders. And it was
in that moment I realized that God had won that battle… the victory was ours to
celebrate.
I don’t know how I can explain what this really means other
than to say, “Honestly, you just had to be there.” But I can say this. I
realized this past week that it is far better to choose in… to choose to fight
for the ones you love, and a very important part of that is to love yourself. For me, much of my Race experience has been
trying to learn how to do just that… love myself. Prior to the Race I battled with self-esteem,
self-image, etc. I wrestled with rejection and fell into the trap of living
life on the defense. Much of this was
based out of the war that had been waged on my family and on me even from a
very early age. While this war had some major battles, most of the weapons used
against us were subtle… things that are used against most families, like lack
of communication, misunderstandings, sarcasm, reasoning away or self
justification, etc. And when those little things added up it took its toll.
Please hear my heart on this. No one was at fault in my family for this…
This past debrief all that I experienced was a sudden
revelation of how much my coping mechanisms (solitude, justification of harsh
words or actions, drinking, eating, sarcasm, etc.) affected those who love me.
By pushing away I gave them the finger… by harsh words or actions I slammed the
door… by drinking and eating I slapped them in the face… by sarcasm I lashed
out in anger… the thought overwhelmed me. However in that moment I felt I had a
Peter moment… being on the water and seeing the waves… but then Jesus speaks
and the focus is brought to where it
needs to be… on Him. In that moment of realizing the pain I was causing others
I realized the love that was shared… I realized the overwhelming magnitude of
that love and felt the strong arms of peace wrap around me. I realized that there
is no reason for self preservation or defense. If you fight beside a brother or
a sister there is no need to worry about what they will do to you… it is
remembering what they will do for you… they will fight for you, love you, serve
you, correct you, speak life over you, encourage you, intercede for you… But we
all have to make that choice. And it starts with choosing to love yourself…
speaking life over yourself… knowing that the person you see in the mirror is
favored above all of creation by the One God… the King of Kings and Lord of
Lords… Can you look in the mirror and
see beauty? Or do you criticize the person you see? Do you speak with
confidence, or do you trip over yourself apologizing for things you don’t
really need to? Do you take time for yourself or do you get too caught up in
putting other before you so much so you have forgotten how to let yourself be
loved? I’m sure you can reason away any of these questions like I have in the
past… but I would challenge you to sober up and answer these truthfully. Go
through the chapter on love in the Bible and ask, “Do I do this with myself?”…
community for these past nine months has taught me that you can only love others as much as you love
yourself. I cannot love my teammates a lot if I don’t truly love myself a lot.
But when we love ourselves we begin to put that off. We begin to share the
gifts God has given us…For a few examples…My teammate Jessica is like that. She
walks in a room and you can’t help but feel the joy that God has given her. Or Rebekah…
she is a woman of such great confidence in who God has made her as woman, I
can’t help but seek the same confidence and truth from my Father. Or Melina,
she speaks and you can’t help but listen because the Spirit fills her with
truth… DJ and Mike have such deep deep wisdom and insight you can help but want
to listen and learn… But if one person is having a bad day on our team, we all
feel it. If one of us is struggling we all feel it. So we cannot think that for
one moment we are independent of that love. And if we lose sight of that, we
deeply hurt those we desire to love. But the beautiful thing about it is that
those people who love you, like my squad loves me, will be there for you… and
the God who made you so wonderfully complex has always loved you… He loves you
enough to put you in a position where He can love you through your family,
friends, church, and even so that you can allow Him to love you through the way
you choose to love yourself.
