In reminiscing and listening to this class share lessons learned through reading “My First white Friend” by Raybon, I find myself diving into my last year and a half and the understanding still not fully obtained concerning knowing myself and truly loving, forgiving, and being at peace with myself.
I’m learning that there is a transition in this life where one must turn from needing external love (i.e. from parents early on to friends or lovers later on) to internally loving myself through Jesus. I guess in my circumstance, I have never needed to truly love myself because I have always had the love pouring into me from my family and friends. I’ve never had to completely find who I am and know who I am because I’ve always known who I am in the eyes of my family and my friends. And because I am a great people pleaser, this was and has been all I needed. However, this delayed the transition for me because I never began to know who I truly am and in not doing so, I never learned to love myself as Jesus loves me.
I am now in this process of learning about who I am, and learning who I am in the eyes of my Father in heaven, learning who I am created to be. Through this, I am learning to love myself. It is so hard to do this when you have spent your whole life doing what others expect or doing what others say in order to feel that love. Since starting, it has been extremely hard learning to love myself in making my own decisions because I’ve never necessarily done that before. It sounds ridiculous actually that I’m just now starting to make decisions, as of summer 2008. But it has to start sometime, right?
