He Loved Me at My Darkest

CTO

I have not posted here for a while because i have been filtering what I post on the blogosphere and on social media. And when I mean a while, it has been months. 

For so long I have been keeping all the thoughts in. I have posts but they are tamed. Either I am too scared of what people are gonna have to say to what I say or i just don't have any decent thoughts to write about. I really can't give what i do not have so i preferred to stay silent.

I was just nudged back to blog again because I had the sudden urge to come back to writing to express my heart. This time I know i need to post this because I want it out there. 

There are moments in life when we are at our highest and sometimes at our lowest. That is a cliche that most of us already know. Yet, most of us often stay in the "in between". That phase wherein we don't fit in to neither of the two categories. We don't know if we are at our highest or at our lowest. I guess we call that lukewarm.

There are a lot of people going through the same phase in life and are just trying to cover up the scars inside them with filtered images and posts. They are making themselves and other people believe that they are happy and that they have peace within them when infact they are as broken as I am.

Yes. I am broken. I am broken because we live in a broken world.

I know and acknowledge that I am broken on a lot of aspects and angles. My brokenness is something I have learned to embrace because through it I can be made whole. 

Yet, no matter how broken I am this time, my heart is overwhelming with love. I am broken. But I am not empty. 

I had a huge void in my life then, it was so big I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't even know what to fill it with. I was so empty, I thought finding appreciation and attachment in people is the solution. I found comfort in knowing I have other people to depend on and I got good with that. I tried to fill it with material possessions but the shoe never fitted and have always failed.

For so long I was caught captive in the bondage of loving wrongly whether it be people or things. I guess I took the context of love in a different understanding and this blog had been a witness to that. I glorified the idea of love so much that I put it on a pedestal. Forgetting that the power does not come from the word love itself but from someone who actually defined love beyond measure and words.

At a lowest point in my life, when I had nothing and no one left to hold on to, I  felt a tug in my heart. I was gradually drawn back to the loving arms of the one and only being who has demonstrated the epitome of unconditional love to mankind. 

And when I learned the real definition of love, my perspective began to change. I learned that then and there, God is love. 

I have been hearing that all my life not really understanding what it truly meant because no one explained it to me. But I was so fortunate that nobody had to because God demonstrated it to me. 

He overshadowed all definition of the word. When I say God is love, he is the exact definition of the greatest word that ever existed.

Indeed, He loved me at my darkest.

Have Faith in Yourself

A lot of thoughts running around my head as I listen to “This Is Me” by Keala Settle from the movie The Greatest Showman.

I am pretty sure lots of people have related to the song.

Applaud to the writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for coming up with the lyrics coz admit it, not many songwriters actually write songs that really make sense nowadays. Another one that is worthy of applause is the superb performance from Keala Settle who really sung the song with all her heart; you can see and feel the conviction.

With a song like that, it deserved to win the Golden Globe Award, it might even win the Oscars this March.

The song came out very timely isn't it?

No.

Sorry, I am wrong.

It transcends TIME.

So, I couldn’t count how many times I have listened to it on Spotify and how many times I have watched the making of it on Youtube but it always gives me the goose bumps and makes me smile as I jam to the beat. It is empowering. It raises hope. It boosts the spirit especially when you are down and you have lost faith in yourself. And as I listen to it, I find myself in tears because the song in fact rouses emotions which are not often uttered vocally.

There are many instances in our lives when we feel like we are a misfit - where we are the odd one out. 

I believe that in this age we are in, we have a lot to look up to, to compare ourselves to, and there are just a lot of standards that are being set, just for a person to feel belonged in the world. And with all of those, most of the time we would question ourselves whether we are worthy or not, which is not supposed to be the case.

Nonetheless, with our human nature we couldn’t help but align ourselves with the standards just so we'd feel secure. Sometimes, even the definition of how to exist is already based on the definition people have created for themselves. Most people would fall short of that definition and they’d end up being torn, depressed for not fitting in to the norm. Despite not being able to change the norm to accept us for who we are, we still do everything just to fit in. Which means breaking ourselves and using others.

I wonder why. We were made wonderfully with capabilities that are only limited to what we deem we can do and we fail to see that because we tend to see our flaws. And again there goes human nature, it has a fascination with the imperfections. The moment we dwell on the flaws, we get stuck there trying to fix what isn’t broken. We don’t realize, we’re just made that way and that the imperfections make us who we are. Nevertheless, we are still so hard on ourselves.

Most of the time, the cause of a lot of our misfit feelings points back to us. We feel inadequate because we make ourselves feel like it. We have low self esteem because we have so many doubts in ourselves. And the doubts are based on the standards that were set by others, which we try to set for ourselves, too. We don’t see the beauty inside us because we are clouded, and we’d rather focus on the flaws. We are afraid to go out of our comfort zones because we are so used to the safe side, and the idea that you are not where you are good at is a recipe for disaster. Most of the time we get scared people will make fun of us, or would talk behind our backs because we overanalyze things… we assume. We plant and feed our fears in our head so we end up trapped inside the box we created for ourselves no matter how uncomfortable it already is, and that is where we settle in. We let others dictate what we can’t do, and what’s worst is that we end up believing in it too.

But why not take a step outside that door? Why not get out of that cramped box and stop hiding? Stop doubting? Stop trying so hard to feel belonged.

If you think of it, why would we try to fit in when the world was actually made so we can fit in? I am not making any sense I know.

Most people would spend their lifetime trying to find the place where they really belong for that is what was instilled to them. Some would even associate it literally with places and people. They believe that the feeling of belongingness is something that can be found in others.  They realize too late or even not at all, what belongingness really meant.

Wouldn’t feeling belonged meant being comfortable in your own skin?

Accepting YOU first, so others could?

If we try so hard to reject ourselves, of who and what we are made of, how are we going to accept others? How are we to grow?

But before we can accept ourselves, in order to feel that way, we have to break through the walls and the rules and the boundaries that we had set for ourselves.

A lot of people will never be as accepting as how we expect them to be. They will criticize, laugh, crush our spirit and put us down a million times but it is not our concern anymore if they accept us or not. Just because they can’t understand how awesome we are with our flaws, means we are gonna let them break us down. Just because we don't fit in to their norms, we have to change ourselves for them. We have to get over that thought of pleasing everyone, and fitting in their lives.

We just have to be who we are.

Live our lives to its fullest without worrying if we are living by their rules or not.

Be proud of ourselves - of who we are.

This is me saying, have faith in yourself.

For if you don’t… then who else will?

I close this with a quote I have always lived by since 2011.

“There are a lot of people out there who will tell you, you can’t.

What you’ve got to do is turn around and say,

Watch me!”

Layne Beachley

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all photo credit goes to their respected owners. I browsed through Google.

xoxo
Nat