The biggest mistake I’ve made…

The biggest mistake I’ve made… in my adult life is mistaking people’s kindness for love.
It’s a blind spot.
It’s been my Achilles Heel.

As a child I was told I was ugly, stupid, and a piece of shit.

I was told that I would never amount to anything.

I believed what I had been told.

So when someone is kind to me I think that is love.

It’s a child’s logic.

I was so maliciously beaten, diminished and belittled, ANY type of kindness was like a drop of water in a desert.

I have traded my body for love.
My money.
My self-respect.

I have compromised my sense of self for people SO extremely, that I people-pleased to the point of degrading self-sacrifice.

I talked to God about it.

I wondered will I EVER move beyond the wounding of my childhood, inflicted by people who said they loved me?

It sucks when the people who say they love you conflate love and violence.

The blending of love and violence creates an insatiable craving FOR love and kindness.

I’ve been listening to pastor Dr. Myles Monroe a lot lately. He is a pastor from the West Indies who is no longer with us. His teachings are profound and practical. They really cause me to rethink just about everything I have related to as “truth.”

Especially self-love as a single woman Believer.

He argues that If I love God, but don’t love myself, I don’t love God. (I’m paraphrasing.) That thought broke my brain. Since I’m made in the image and likeness of God, I am an individual expression of God.

To reject me, to criticize me, to pimp me out emotionally for scraps of attention and affection; for value and inclusion—is akin to spiritual blasphemy.

There are times I don’t feel well enough to distinguish kindness from just good manners.

I am now clear that when I love God, I have to love myself BEFORE I love my neighbor.

I must take the love of God as true love and let God’s love be my “go to” to feel love.

Once I love me, my OVERFLOW of love can THEN be poured on others. Whether they are kind or not.

I’m realizing that people can be kind for their own character, spiritual beliefs, or agendas. Simply put: other people’s kindness has nothing to do with loving me.

People can be kind for myriad reasons:
—they were raised to be kind
—they are kind because their faith requires it
—they have ulterior motives
—they are empathetic beings fulfilling a need
and many more reasons.

I have to turn to the kindness of God instead of craving it from people. It is a hunger no human can satiate.

So I will spend time in deep prayer and possibly fasting, until God can replace my need for human kindness with God’s love.

Thanks for witnessing.

Sincerely,

Dr. Venus