So why are love and whatever the Bleep I know so important to me?
Well, I suppose it’s important to everyone. The core of what we all strive for. The great equalizer of us all.
I have to admit that when it comes to love, marriage, and family, I set myself up pretty badly by placing the barometer for measuring its success somewhere between The Brady Bunch of my childhood and The Cosby Show of my young adulthood.
But I am gradually learning to throw away the rulebook and get on with it! Stop wallowing in what ain’t and rejoice in what is! To not let anything about so-called unmet expectations or, as I heard one preacher say, “pre-conceived misconceptions,” block the flow of life and love from fully expressing through me.
Perhaps the core purpose underlying each of our lives is to fully share Who We Are with the world.
To give disappointments or so-called unfulfilled expectations the power to allow us to shrink back is criminal.
According to author and financial guru T. Harv Eker, "The world doesn't need more people playing small. It's time to stop hiding out and start stepping out. It's time to stop needing and start leading. It's time to start sharing your gifts instead of hoarding them or pretending they don't exist.”
This shrinking back does not honor God or me, and deprives the world of what God gave to me to share. And as Marianne Williamson so famously quoted about our deepest fear, “…as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Maybe I’m the only one with these issues but feel free to take note if applicable.)
You have to understand that all I ever wished for was a Cosby-esque marriage replete with Sunday Dinners spanning generations; birthday and anniversary celebrations dancing the night away at jazz clubs with the entire family; and HBCU graduations where my husband and I would march in full regalia alongside our children.
Plus I thought that doggedly embracing a staunch Black Christian church dogma would guarantee that this charmed life would surely come to pass.
However, this path did not unfold for me and I have spent a lot of time grieving the absence of this reality. This led me to the misguided belief that when it comes to love and family life, I had blown any chance of being loved and accepted by God or anyone else.
After all, no self-respecting, committed Christian woman parades up and down the aisle and in and out of the court house twice and deserves to be loved and accepted.
But I am finally loosening my grip on that albatross and beginning to embrace the notion that that couldn’t be further from the Truth.
And to paraphrase what author Elizabeth Gilbert (my Eat, Pray, Love she-ro) recalled her great guru Richard from Texas telling her, I need to let go of a wishbone where my backbone oughta be.
Wo-man up, Alli!
So even though I feel like I flunk a lot of this a lot of the time, here’s what the Bleep I am learning:
First of all, I was never not loved or accepted by God.
Second of all, no one can love or accept me unless I love and accept myself.
And finally, those who don’t love and accept me are none of my business.
I’m just gonna stick with those who do.
By loving and accepting God and myself, I automatically bring the right people and experiences into my life. And I do deserve the best life has to offer simply because God created me as a divine expression of Him / Herself in the earth.
And that includes, to quote one of my favorite movies, The Brothers, “Love, happiness, and all that other shit!”
When I think back to Neale Donald Walsch and his conversations with God, I can begin to see that perhaps it wasn’t until every imaginable and unimaginable so-called “failure” showed up in my experience that I could begin to accept that nothing on the outside makes me Who I Am.
My worthiness never changes. My value is a constant and is not assured or defined by my circumstances.
We (God and me) got this and, most importantly, God’s got me!
So what I unequivocally know about love is that it is.
And that’s good enough for me J
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