dailydatewithgod

All around us are forces providing information and ideas.  We don’t even need to turn around and face them, they are coming at us from all sides and through every avenue.  It can be overwhelming when trying to determine which to let in or consider valid.  If we do not know how to be beside ourselves, how can we know what is meaningful for us and what is just information?  On our daily dates when God is beside me I get the practice of what it means to be beside myself.  Do I have a sense of who I am at my core?  What I do think and feel about something before I am influenced by someone outside of me?  It is important for us to develop our own sense of what it means to be in our own corner.  At a young age, when nothing in my world made sense, my best option was to abandon myself.  I learned quickly to adapt to others expectations and ideas.  When I did have my own, I was careful how much I voiced them and would check others for their level of acceptance.  I learned to talk quickly or mumble when I could not hide what I really felt or thought.  I thought because I had a number of experiences where those who were important to me could not stand beside me that I must not be worth it.  As I live as an adult woman some of those well-developed defense mechanisms are still strong.  It takes patient and persistent effort to be someone who is willing to be beside herself no matter what.  When I cannot do it and I want to run (which never really works), I turn to God and say, Help me not abandon me.  Show me what it means to stand beside myself and ride this wave through.  Then I take a deep breath and stand amidst the discomfort of the waves of unknowing in practicing a new behavior.  I am grateful it gets easier with time and with God ready to be beside me each day on our dates, I get a reminder that I am worth the effort.