Sunday ramblings

I believe in love and positive thinking and hope. I want to live in a world where everyone is happy and kind and people are accepted for who they are and not expected to be the people others wished or needed them to be. A world where judgment doesn't exist and understanding and forgiveness rule. 

I love inspirational quotes (if you don't believe me you should check out my Pinterest page - most of my pins are quotes). 

But I am not really seeing that world. Not in our families and not even in our churches. Oh, we might talk a good talk but in the end there are just so many hurting people. And what I have noticed is that most of the time the reason they hurt is because of people. People let us down. They don't fulfill our expectations. They hurt our feelings. They exclude us, are too busy for us, don't understand us. They say mean things. They don't love us. They don't know how to love us. Especially the ones we want to love us the most.

And I am reminded how important it is that we love ourselves first and more than we need other people to love us. That we need to understand ourselves first before we can expect others to. And that in order to do that we must be aware of what our needs and expectations, our weaknesses and our limitations are. We need to understand ourselves first before we can expect someone else to.

I think that when we value ourselves first, others will value us as well. When we love ourselves, learn to nurture ourselves, are gentle with ourselves ... others can too. And when we understand fully who we are and what our greatest needs are, we will be able to surround ourselves with the kind of people that we need to walk next to us and stop expecting things from people who can't.

We need to live and breathe love. And grace. Towards others of course, but also towards ourselves. And we must learn to forgive. We need to forgive ourselves for not being perfect and forgive others for not being perfect too (and for not giving us what we need). We have to stop judging and comparing ourselves to a standard that is self-imposed or culture / society based. And maybe focus a little more on the One whose love never fails. 

"Praise the LORD! He is good. 

God's love never fails,

Praise the God of all gods.

God's love never fails."

-Psalm 136: 1-2

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