Day 145 - Choose Love - Intimacy (in to me I see)
📖Daily Reading
Song of Songs 5-8
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
Song of Songs 8:6-7
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, it’s jealousy as enduring as the grave. Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame. Many waters cannot quench love, nor can rivers drown it. If a man tried to buy love with all his wealth, his offer would be utterly scorned.
My friend and fellow coach Gina Tassone is really great at reconstructing words into helpful insights and meaning. She often uses the the words ‘into me I see’ as a creative twist on the word intimacy. The actual root word of intimate means ‘in or inner most’, so I think this is a very useful and practical way to reconstruct this word. In intimate relationships we are allowing others to see into our inner most selves. It is vulnerable, courageous and should be a privilege reserved for those who have earned that position in your life.
Because we are human, we often break this bond of trust with each other intentionally and often times unintentionally. Scars can build up and lead to trouble having intimacy with others even those who do ‘earn’ it and more importantly with ourselves. I know I sound like a broken record but it starts from inside. We need to see into our selves into our inner most thoughts and feelings and choose love and compassion for ourselves.
The great commission is to love God and love others and love your neighbor as yourself! Often we forget that this love is predicated on self love. How can we possibly choose to love others if we are not choosing to love ourselves? It doesn’t even make sense. Yet this is how most of us are doing it, how can we truly love God if we don’t love his most precious and loved creation and part of himself- YOU?
At the time of writing this we had yet another mass shooting in our country, nearly 20 children and teachers from an elementary school in Uvalde Texas. Shot by a obviously disturbed, confused and lost young soul, who was only 18 himself. Love is such a strong emotion, here in is this verse it is compared to death and it inspires such passionate feelings as jealousy which is a twisted side effect when someone in a loving relationship feels betrayed, hurt, angry. The verse even goes onto describe a fire that cannot be quenched, also love can’t be bought. But often when we choose to act out in revenge and anger aren’t we in a way trying to ‘buy’ love, to force it. It is a desperate plea for love and if not satisfied can lead to a feeling of; ‘if I can’t have it neither can you’. It is unquenchable as the verses states.
Love and hate are two sides of the same coin with the same internal motivation. We all want to belong, to be seen, and to be accepted. Many of us are doing things opposite of this in an effort to gain love from sources outside of ourselves. Some are checking out or numbing out from the pain of knowing it is missing or not it not being what we want it to be. Meanwhile we are taking this perceived input we are getting from ‘out there’ and turning it inward to further shame, guilt and hate ourselves. You can’t hate, shame, or guilt your way into love. It woks the other way around.
God is love, when we are plugged into the source we can be a conduit, and we need to stay plugged in. The dilemma is that He also gave us our own ‘power’ source and back up batteries, called free will and choice. So we often don’t know when we aren’t plugged in or are plugged into to the ‘right’ source. We plug into each other in co-dependency that can look and feel like love, but it isn’t. We plug into our spouses, children, churches, workplaces, communities, without God being the source it is a limited and false version of love.
My heart 💔breaks for the families that have just lost their children and loved ones. I can’t even imagine and I don't’ think this is God’s plan. I also know that God can bring beauty from ashes, when we choose Love. A woman named Scarlett Lewis started a movement called the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement after her son, Jesse was killed in his classroom at Sandy Hook elementary. I remember being so in awe of her ability to choose love after this tragedy struck her child, family community. I am still in awe, I have thought about it often since then; could I choose love if that happened to me? I don’t think I am there yet, but I know it is the path I want to be on. She has set an example of what is possible and I choose to move in the direction of love 💗 and I know that path leads from and to God. When we choose we also are choosing to be the change we want to see in the world and one life and one🕯 at a time we can change the world together.
P.s. I also know it wouldn’t be possible to be moving in this direction without my sober mind, and choosing to love myself and stop self medicating and stop using wine 🍷 to ‘take the edge off’.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
How is your relationship with yourself? With Others? Do you love yourself? If you tend to have a lot of relationship trouble, it might be time to look in the mirror. This is a reflection of what is happening or not happening inside.
📖Tomorrows Reading
Isaiah 1
Coaching Opportunity
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If you have stuck with me this far, then you are not reading this by accident, I believe God has a plan for you and is calling you forward!😉🤩
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