The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.  – Stephen R. Covey

Jesus prayed while hanging on the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I was never felt like a specially prized child.  I always believed that something was so terribly wrong with me.  Many times, especially in my teens I felt I should not have been born.  No matter what I did, how I did it, and why I did what I did, whatever ”it” was, always came crushing down as not good enough or shameful.  I was demonized, labeled, ridiculed, and criticized, being stripped of who you were meant to be.  In retrospect I think I see now why it was so.  Apart from shame-based culture,  I was not “bad” or “not good enough”.  I was just different. I didn’t follow the status quo.  To understand myself became the greater dimension of my journey.  It’s been a wild ride.  Mental strain, emotional rollercoaster, and self-love deficiency.

I became my own parent, my own sibling, teacher, and my very own friend.   It was in this stage, Jesus became so real to me.

I asked God what He meant by saying  “love others as yourself”.  I felt it was selfish and arrogant, so un-Christlike, even narcissistic to love myself.  It seems the Bible is filled with contradictions.  I was confused.  Put others first, love yourself as you love others, and so many don’t , don’t, don’t.  God always send people to your life with their negative or positive vibes.  You can feel it in the air, discern in your spirit.  You just know it.  I met a young woman who showed me what  “self-love”.  I liked what I saw but I was too ashamed to ask how she came to that stage in her life.  I also met a man who told me that there is healing to such things as anxiety, fear, and shame.  Why am I anxious?  What is anxiety, and how it had controlled my life that drove me crazy?

Anxiety is the byproduct of shame and fear.  All these things happen because of trauma.  I was in my late 20’s and very ignorant.  I knew I was really running late in my growth to self-love and maturity so I ran.  Because of my learning disability, I pretty much ran all over the place. First things first:   I stopped caring to what others say, do, or think.  When I learned about psychological projection it made the difference in my life; leading me to focus on the healing power of self-care, self-acceptance, and, most importantly self-love. Therefore, I’ve been investing my time to understand my brain where every battle begins and ends.  Why I think this way or that way… why am I so sensitive to some menial happenstance — something stupid.  Because of my mental state as a teenager, I told my kids, “Good character is so much better than good grades.”

Someone said that parenting is a process of investment.   “Parents not only invest their care, energy, and resources in their child, they invest their assumptions, ambitions, hopes, even dreams about how this person and this child will turn out when grown up.  The more investment parents make, the more invested they feel, the more firmly wed to expecting even deserving cherished outcome they can be.”

We, as parents, are to encourage, nurture and help them see their dreams and let them go.  Our children grow to know more than we do… talk to them, listen to them, you might learn something amazing.  Encourage them to pursue their dreams, not your dream.  The phases of delay and difficulties to realize their dreams are NOT yours to fix…   Just be there and like Jacob, pondered his son’s dreams.

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