It sounds unromantic, but it’s realistic. 

Your girlfriend or boyfriend can’t be your everything. Your wife and husband can’t be your everything. Your friends or family can’t be your everything.

Because everything is perfect and no one is perfect. Imperfect people will soon disappoint you if you placed your hopes and dreams on just one person. 

Yesterday I went to a forgiveness class and there was a questionnaire that asked something along the lines of :

“I am angry at_______because of___________” From 1-5 level forgiveness level.

I put down family members and noticed a theme.

Everything stemmed from my absent father. He was physically and emotionally absent for 10 years and even before then my parents were already separated. So I lacked the emotional support of a father and my mother was also very emotionally absent from me. 

So I started looking for that emotional support somewhere else, friends. 

But when they said the wrong thing, set their own boundaries, I couldn’t take it. I lashed out, I disappeared just as my father disappeared from my life. That was the only way I knew how to protect myself. 

I let other people step on me or was NICE to people to get what I wanted- their approval. 

Then God took me into a journey of solitude and seeing myself right.

I needed to make God my sole emotional support and to be my own biggest cheerleader.

I’m not SAYING we don’t need people, because people help us, support us…in the right ways…..

BUT when we are looking for approval from people—-they will surely anger and disappoint you. Approval doesn’t come from people. God has already approved of you. He says “you are enough, you are worthy of love”.

Everyone has bad days. If we look for approval and put unjust burden on them to take care of us when they are incapable of even taking care of themselves—-we become codependent. 

Codependency.

This happens when we make people God. People are not God. People are imperfect.

See yourself right. You’re not perfect. You will disappoint others. You were not put on this earth to please people nor become a God for them. In fact you HURT them by taking their own emotional responsibilities. 

1. Awareness
2. Releasing the Past

So last night I had to come to terms with my past. Yes I reconciled with my dad, yes I forgave him and myself…but did that mean everything changed? No. He was still physically and emotionally absent from my life. Things didn’t change. I didn’t magically become close with him nor did I magically have a happy childhood filled with moments where I shared my heart with my dad. 

A moment of grief.

A moment of acceptance.

I said “I accept that this is the reality and I’m accepting it because you God are my everything and I want to share my heart with you”.

Now I can truly let go. I can’t change the past nor can I really change this relationship by myself and it’s okay. It’s okay because God’s got me.

Now I need to be the biggest cheerleader for myself….and it’s taken me years to realize that. As I backpacked through the caves of Malaysia and traversed the jungles of Ecuador, climbing mountains in Taiwan I would hear God whispering to me. I was scared at times, lying awake with no one to talk to with deathly food poisoning, thousands of miles away from home. Yes, I didn’t have much of an emotional support, but there I was – “am I enough for you?” I heard my own soul ask. 

You are enough, you are enough. It’s okay.

There was this theme in my questionnaire- “people didn’t support me in my dreams”.

And I remember all the people who felt utterly alone in their dreams – Abraham, Joseph, etc…and all the tech companies that no one believed in in the beginning. LOL.

Do YOU believe in your dreams? 

Allow others to be themselves. You don’t need everyone to believe in your dreams for you to pursue them. Think of it as a secret in your heart, a baby you are feeding. It is exciting and you may want to share it with the world but sometimes the world is not ready for such a magical thing.

Sometimes you might meet a few rare gems who will stand beside you. Don’t make them your everything. Everyone has their own journey to walk and sometimes it’s through a dark and cold alley. God will walk with you through those alleys. He will never leave you.