Not Proud Enough.

Has there ever been a time in your life you weren't proud of?

A time that you were a person you didn't like and just the thought of looking back makes your stomach churn?

There has been a part of my life where I can look back and say that the person who I was, was a person I couldn't face in the mirror. A person who was so low on self esteem and confidence, a person who was so easily manipulated and a person who couldn't see the downward spiral my life was taking. 

I allowed myself to be controlled by others and let myself fall deeper and deeper into a hole that was leading no where. 

I put myself out there and into the situation fully and completely, I trusted the wrong people and I cared too much what others thought.

It wasn't until just recently that I've had some of the people closest to me point out that the person that I was,  has only helped make me into the person that I am.

A person who is stronger and wiser. A person who can not be easily charmed or swayed or manipulated.

A person who can look at herself in the mirror and know that there is no going back to who I was. 

I know that I was supposed to go through that low moment in my life, because it wasn't until I was feeling so numb and empty that I realized that I was normally so warm and full of life.

I learned we can't let anybody, no matter how good looking, how smart, how charming, how funny, take away our light and who we are as a person.

We don't need to fit anybody's mold. We shouldn't make anybody try to fit our mold.

Life is so precious and there are going to be times when we mess up, sometimes we mess up really big for a short period of time and other times we keep making little bad decisions that add up to a long period of time. We just have to take the mess and clean it up. 

We have to put our best self forward, we don't need to carry around the baggage of our past. Our past doesn't define us. The people who we've been in the past aren't the people that we are.

God did not give me anything I couldn't handle. God knew that the situations He put me in would all be beneficial for me one day. He knew the lessons I would learn and He knew I would get back on the right track.

Sometimes I think society makes us feel like we have to be so perfect that having a past that isn't perfect makes us flawed and damaged goods. Show me a perfect adult on the planet at this very moment...good luck. Because we are all stitched together with flaws and heartbreaks and failures. 

Its how we handle our flaws and heartbreaks and failures. Its how we learn to take the bad times and make them into good lessons. 

Be a person who you can look at in the mirror and be proud of.