Learning About Myself

It's funny how many posts I've written between this one and my last one that I could never bring myself to hit the publish button on.  I'm not completely for sure why unless its that in the end they seemed to just be the jumble of thoughts in my head that only made sense to me.  

The last few weeks have been hard to describe for me.  There's been a lot of internal wrestling as I've sorted through various things I've been discovering about myself.  I mentioned in one of my last posts about a program I had just started to try called Dressing Your Truth.  I loved the idea behind this program that a blogger I follow shared.  The more I looked into it the more I liked the idea that I could dress in a way that instantly began to inform others who I am.  The idea that certain colors, textures, shapes all can compliment the way God created me and the gifts he's given me was definitely something that appealed to me.  

I think what I did not expect going into this is that it would open the door on some things from the past I'd pushed way back into the recesses of my memory.  As I began the process of embracing who I was created to be in a more visible way I discovered that there were things over the years I have loved that I've not allowed myself to experience.  I shut them off and pushed them to the side for years because I felt it made me look weak or less than others.

The creator of Dressing Your Truth refers to four energy types.  I struggled with that a little at first, but then I realized that like so many words in our vocabulary, the word energy has various meanings.  In this application the definition of forcefulness of expression seems to fit the best.  So as I explored the types of energy or expression that she outlined from her years of study I discovered (at first much to my chagrin) that I fit into the Type 2 Energy or Expression.  What this means for me is that I express myself in more subtle and softer ways.  I'm not the life of the party, but I won't be hiding in the corner from everyone either.  I'll find myself a small group that I can feel connected and comfortable around and those are my people for the night.  

It's crazy because I've spent so much of my life thinking that I needed to be more extroverted and that I needed to be all things to all people when all along I was created with the purpose of connecting in smaller more detailed ways.  It's interesting for me because some of the difficult moments that have come out of the last few years start to be explained as I looked into my type of expression more.  I realized that one of my strengths becomes seeing and recognizing unhealth in situations in the earliest stages.  The fact that I'm sensitive when used in the right way can help uncover the little things that will keep something from moving forward in a healthy way that allows for growth.  I start to see the reasons that I instinctively knew over the years it was time to remove myself from a particular situation.  It was part of a gift I've been given as opposed to a crazy emotional roller coaster I was on.  

As a little bookworm over the years I've read The Five Love Languages, I've taken Personality tests, DISC profiles and anytime someone posts a test on Facebook I usually end up taking it always wanting to learn more about myself.  I've often struggled if I didn't get the results I viewed as more positive expressions, but now I'm beginning to see the strength in the answers I've gotten over the years.  I've started to explore ways that I can live out of my strengths as opposed to merely wanting the energy/expression that someone else has.  It's so funny how they all begin to come together and form a picture titled TONYA when I start to look through the lens of I was created with a unique set of gifts and talents and God gave me all the tools I need to be the best version of me from day 1.  

All of this causes me to reflect on my word for the year Recklessly Abandoned.  I start to realize that it takes form in this instance in that I can start to let go of everything that people have tried to tell me about myself and embrace the part of me that I've been afraid to acknowledge existed.

There is a line in the song Live Like That by Sidewalk Prophets 

Recklessly Abandoned never holding back.

To live in who you were created to be means letting go of what others have said about you and living in the truth of who God made you to be.  It means embracing it in every way possible and for me that next step has been to begin dressing true to who I am.  

Reading and Relationships

I recently realized something about myself that I somehow managed to miss before.  My obsession with books has always managed to be a source of entertainment for my friends and family in some way shape or form.  Whether it was the fact that my books held my bed up better than the frame at one point or that I had more books in my closet than clothes, there was always something to find entertaining about my obsession with the written word.  It really didn't matter what it was I would read anything I could get my hands on.  In the last four months I have worked my way through that book collection and have taken it down to a mere fraction of what it once was.  I just realized though in looking over what I kept that there was this consistent theme that emerged from the choice of previously read books that I held on to.  

Now like every self respecting single young woman I will confess a LOT of the books in my collection seem to have been romance novels.  The interesting thing I discovered as I pulled books off of shelves and tossed them in boxes for Half Price Books, those were some of the easiest to part with and when I look at the remaining books now, I find a trend in the romance novels I couldn't quite make myself part with which led me to realize something that I didn't realize at the time I was reading them.  The trend I found myself noticing was that the books with the Cinderella storyline - Girl meets boy, instant attraction, short period of knowing one another, then on to marriage- didn't make the cut.  Every last one of them ended up in the boxes.  The ones that were left were those with more of a Beauty and the Beast storyline - Girl meets boy, a gradual friendship occurs and the couple ends up in a place where they discover their life has become better because the other person is in it to the point a deeper relationship develops almost without their realizing it until the relationship is threatened. 

That said, no the purpose of writing this is not to expound on some romantic revelation I had, but the fact that it made me realize even my preference in reading material has probably been telling me something for years and I just kept missing it.   Relationships that have meaning are hugely important to me.  I don't do well as an island.  I need people in my life who will encourage and challenge me and that I can trust to give me advice.  Those don't develop in the superficial world of Cinderella relationships.  Those are found in the darker less appealing world of Beauty and the Beast.  They are found as you come to accept one another with the faults and failings you both bring into the relationship. 

The thing I've always wondered about Cinderella is what happened over the next 10 years after she rides off with the prince?  After all they really didn't know anything about one another.  How many times did the fairy tale meet a bump in the road?  On the other hand I never wonder that in Beauty and the Beast.  They knew one another rather well, by the end of their story and were better set to expect the bumps in the road.  Yes, we tend to take away from Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast the romantic story, but as I looked at the books remaining on my shelf I realized that whether its a romance, biography, fiction or non-fiction I'm left with the feeling that my favorite books over the years have been telling me I have a desire for more meaningful relationships in every area of my life.  It's a funny thing to realize that you probably had the key to an area of your life long before you ever figured out what it was for...

Cleaniness Might Be Next to Godliness, but Organization Would Seem to be the Path There....

I have come to a realization about myself recently thanks to a friend's personal observation.  After a Facebook post stating my latest project of organizing and clearing out with her response that she does the same thing when she needs to think, I discovered so do I!!  Thanks to her personal observation I have recognized a pattern to my cleaning schedule!  When I'm fairly content with where things are not really challenged to think or maybe I'm just plain feeling sorry for myself, my apartment shows it!!  I suppose I should be thankful God sends life changing events to turn my life upside down every so often so the place gets a good cleaning! 


This year for some reason I decided to evalute the "stuff" I was holding onto early in the year, but certainly didn't expect the mass clearing I've managed so far!  Honestly even at this point I can't figure out how or why I decided to "clear out" some of the things I've parted with, but I know that it was time to let go of it.  For anyone who knows me they will understand that books are my obsession!  Growing up books were my escape from reality.  They were a way for me to travel to exotic locations and different eras of history and live a life in my mind I only dreamed about.  One of my favorite stories to illustrate the importance of that particular possession is the fact that by the time I was 13 I had amassed a collection in the thousands that I did not want to part with upon which my Dad insisted some had to go.  Talk about traumatic!!  If I remember right I was livid and took quite a while to get over it.  That said my Dad would be very proud of me today since while I will always value my books, I have found they aren't necessary to my living and breathing. 

Of course it's not necessarily that the possessions are wrong, but I had to evaluate why I was holding onto them which resulted in the realization that in the big picture they aren't necessary to my happiness.  They take up space in my life that while I didn't recognize it right away has been replaced by other more important things such as relationships, the nieces and nephews I've "adopted", the friends who have become family.  Of course once you find you can part with the possessions you value the most everything else is a discovery in how free you can really become as you stop letting those things rule your life and let God fill it with other things a little more each day.  Now does that mean that there will never be days that the apartment looks less than it's best.  Of course not!  I fully expect that I will be able to organize and re-organize and re-re-organize many times over the coming years, but the way I look at it now is that if all of that organizing means God's making me think, well I'll just keep at it!