Shifting My Focus

What better time to write a post about focusing than now. 

If I'm being completely honest, for the past few days I've been getting attacked by thoughts of nameless again. These are thoughts I've thought before, emotions I've gone through before, questions and concerns I've been through before...this is obviously nothing new. 

Of course the past still bothers me which is why when thoughts like those do come it's really hard for me to turn them off. And if I'm being really honest, part of me doesn't want to because I want answers. It makes me sick to my heart to not know what's going on in nameless' head, and to think that he really just doesn't care anymore. And why do I care? Why do I continue to let this bug me, and take my focus off of a more relevant task at hand? 

I don't even know.

What I do know is that when I get attacked back to back with thoughts about nameless, it must mean that this is meant to distract me from accomplishing something I wouldn't be able to accomplish if I'm still stuck in a hole about nameless. But sometimes I forget this.

 I can also forget that I actually have the option and the power to shift my focus. I just don't always use that power. Instead I'll decide to put energy into torturing myself with scenarios I don't actually know and questions I can't answer. 

But focusing is not easy, at least for me it's not. Especially when there are things on your heart that have not be resolved and you can't get answers from the very person who started this in the first place. 

And of course the only one left to turn to is God. It's not that I don't turn to God in situations like these, but sometimes I can get so caught up in wrestling with these emotions that I forget to rely on my spirit. Even as I'm writing this, I'm remembering that my unsettled mind is not all that I have. I have my spirit, which is the connection to the peace I need to settle my mind even when I don't have answers. 

Wrestling with my thoughts and emotions, can make me feel like I'm far away from the peace of God, to the point where I feel too lost to find my way back; but all it literally takes is the mental decision to shift my focus. That's it.

 Now all I need is the will power to do it. 

Until next time.

Triggers

Trying to forget something (or someone) isn't that easy when you have reminders thrown in your face. Even if you don't have direct reminders, it doesn't even have to be in the same context as your situation. One simple word can take you back 5 years into the past and all of a sudden you find yourself going through that same situation as if it happened 2 hours ago. 

I don't know about you but that's me. I keep thinking that I'm good with nameless, but then something can trigger a memory, sometimes nothing will trigger it and here I am talking myself through it as if we (myself and I) didn't have this conversation before. 

It also doesn't help that's it's been 5 months since we last spoke. Talk about triggers. How am I ever going to stop remembering if he keeps popping up; it's like the memories just keep piling up.

I think there's a root to the triggers though. If something is being triggered, a memory or a thought, I think it's probably because there is something in me that's unsettled. Of course it's hard to feel "settled" with anything that happened over the last 5 years between me and nameless. Everything about what happened is unsettling. I never really got proper closure, or found peace with it, and that's partly because I was waiting on him to give that to me; but he wasn't (and still isn't) willing to communicate. He would rather brush everything under the rug and smooth over it, even though that's not how you even begin to start over. 

In order to start over, you have to heal from the past and in order to heal from the past you have to go through it. And not go through it to just sulk in it, but go through it so you can learn from it, gain a different perspective, do things differently, and do them better moving forward. A simple, "how can we move forward from this?" would suffice. Or even a conversation of what was going through his head just so I can understand, you know?

But no. I have to find closure all on my own, and in the meantime, deal with triggers of memories that lead to questions I don't have the answer to. 

But I guess I don't have to find closure completely on my own. I could rely on Divine love to see me through. 

This all comes down to the fact that I can't rely on another person to give me peace that only God can give me. I mean come on, how can a guy give you peace and heal your brokenness if he's broken himself? 

Sometimes I have to remind myself of this when a memory pops up and I'm itching for an explanation. I can't rely on a broken soul for love and consolation. However, I can rely on the one who created souls, to fill the cracks of my soul with the love I truly need.

Until Next Time. 

 

The One

The first thing I usually think about when I hear 'the one' is a soulmate; the person you're meant to be with for the rest of your life. The person that compliments you in every way, the person you won't ever want to live your life without: the 'one.'

But relying on that one person to come isn't enough, and when they do actually come, it still won't be enough. Not because they're not doing everything they can, but because there is really only one being that is meant to fulfill you, and they aren't just any human being.

Having a soulmate to live out your days with is great, and definitely meant to be something we find enjoyment in, but they aren't meant to be the one that you solely rely on for security, purpose, or even happiness. At the end of the day a human being alone isn't capable of completely satisfying your complex human soul because they weren't meant to. If that were the case, heartbreak wouldn't exist and I wouldn't have created two whole blogs based on it.

The reason why a human being alone isn't enough, is because we weren't designed to be fulfilled by or to depend on another human's love or attention. We were designed by a loving Creator who created us to depend on his love and energy alone. Another person is not meant to be God in your life, The One who created you is. I realize now that that is why God is called God, because that's literally who he is meant to be in our lives. No other person or thing is meant to be a god, a.k.a, put on a pedestal as the the center of our affection and dependency. And if you think about it no other person or thing can truly satisfy our souls in the way that it needs to be satisfied.

We were designed to need God, so everything else we try to satisfy ourselves with will never last because the only thing meant to fulfill us completely is communion with our Creator. Our souls are too complex for another human being who also is just as fragile as you to completely satisfy it. We need something bigger than us and what or who we use to temporarily satisfy ourselves.

  This is just a reminder to myself that whenever I'm feeling a little down from reminders of the past with nameless; that my joy, my happiness, my peace, does not rely on his actions. I know I said that in my last post but I'm saying now that I literally cannot rely on him because I wasn't made to be dependent on him. He wasn't created to completely satisfy me either. He's a broken human being who needs The One who he was created for just like the rest of us.

What my heart needs isn't reconciliation with nameless or some grand confession of his love for me, but consistent communion and love by The One I was actually created to depend on; the only One who is meant to be God of my heart and soul. Knowing this is, I think, the key to really healing emotionally.


Until next time.

Facing Your Feelings

I stopped giving my emotional damage much thought when I thought I had a handle on how to subdue the pain. Sometimes it's easy to just treat the symptoms by doing what makes you feel better instead of getting to the root of the issue. Sometimes it's easy to ignore the root issue when you're not being faced with reminders of your past.

But when you do get reminded, all the emotions come rushing back. Suddenly all the memories start swirling in your head, and then a whiff of anger may hit you, or sadness, or regret, or everything all at once. Then the questioning starts, and you're living in those painful moments trying to analyze and find the reasons why everything went wrong.
And it's hard not to entertain those thoughts when...well...they stem from the issues you have in your heart.

Experiencing heartbreak is what caused me to have some 'heart' issues or emotional issues that I thought I had handled by just not thinking about it, living life, and not looking back, yada yada. But ignoring the issues in my heart did not eradicate those issues. Those issues just became dormant until something triggered it. Then I wondered why I was angry and crying about my heartbreak that happened 5 years ago, as if it happened yesterday. Of course I repeated the same process of "just getting over it," and not thinking about it, but that never works for long.

So how do I eradicate this issue completely? I mean for good. Well first, instead of just brushing over my heart, I have to take a good look at it and see the condition that it's in.

I want to be truly, truly at peace. Like no thought about any ounce of my past moves me or brings me even close to tears, or anger, or sadness. I don't want to care enough to relive it and think about it over and over again. Emotional pain takes time to heal from, like serious time, but I think a lot of us don't give ourselves that time. We spend so much time trying to find a quick fix and ignoring just how complex and delicate our hearts are.

Emotions are not something to run away from. I think, instead, they're something to embrace and take heed to because they could be telling us the condition of our hearts.


Until next time.