And then there was me....

Good Morning, Blogland! 

Top of the morning to you!  So I was having this strange internal dialog with myself and realized the answer to this thing that has plagued me almost since the beginning of this blog.  Why can MzNewy say she has never been in love?  By Job I think I've got it.... You cannot belong to or love anyone else until you belong to and love yourself.   MzNewy came to you broken and tattered.  I mean really, remember when I told you about my self-esteem issues?  I was struggling because I was trying to be everything to everyone and I wasn't being true to me and what I wanted.

So what caused this epiphany?  Hmm.  Newy has been honest with you for the most part since the beginning of the blog.  However, there are some things I have omitted.  When you go back and read the archives, you see a few turning points in my writing:

Turning point 1) March/April 2006 - When my friend Eric died suddenly.  I came face to face with my own mortality, like really face-to-face.  Not that folks I know haven't died, but this was different.  Eric was the picture of health.  He ate right, worked out daily, loved God and was an awesome dad to his sons.  Eric was only 45.  At that time I was having health challenges and while I was trying to solidify my relationship with God, I was struggling.  It was during this time I retreated into a shell and questioned whether I was worthy to walk with God given all that I had done in life.

Turning point 2) December 2006 I had the first of a couple of surgeries to correct some health issues.  The second one was October of 2007.  Specifically October 29.  I didn't blog about it because I wasn't looking for a pity party.  I was reminded during that time of the lyrics to one of my favorite songs

I've had some good days
I've had some hills to climb
I've had some weary days
And some lonely nights
But when I look around and I think
Things over...all of my good days,
They outweigh my weary days - I won't complain

Now that the challenges are behind me, I can tell you, that was the second time I faced my own mortality. After the October 2007 surgery.  I vowed to live life to the fullest.  I embraced 2008 with that new philosophy.  I laugh more, I don't dwell on things I can't control, and I have stopped being such a control freak.  Yes, I know, hard to fathom.  LOL   I live one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, taking the world as it is, knowing the only one I can change is me.

And my final turning point...about the beginning of 2009.  Well, that was when I realized that I love me some me and I don't need external validation.  Now that I love me, maybe I won't be so emotionally unavailable.  Maybe now I won't put on my track shoes and run everytime I feel an inkling of vulnerability. No matter what I have come through, or how many perils I have safely passed, or how imperfect and jagged (in some places perhaps irreparably) my life has been, I cannot in my heart of hearts imagine how it could have been different. As I look back on it, it slips in behind me in orderly array, and, with all its mistakes, acquires a sort of eternal fitness, and even, at times, of poetic glamour.  It's during these quiet reflections that I realize I am so much better for the heartaches, the hiccups, the hurdles and the hills.  I needed those hurdles to stretch me, to make me a better me.  I needed to realize that at the end of the day, until I belonged to and loved me, I COULDN'T love anyone else.  I have finally stopped pulling the scabs off my wounds and let them heal.  I have stopped crying out of sorrow and self-pity and instead cry for the renewed hope that I have, I cry for the joy that I get from life and I cry for the faith God has in me to leave a footprint in this world.  Everyday He wakes me, He gives me another chance to get it right.  525,600 minutes...That's how many chances God gives me every year....And I am grateful.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee,
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife,
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand journeys to plan
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man
In truth that she learned or in times that he cried
In the bridges she burned or the way that he died
It's time now to sing out though the story never ends
Let's celebrate, remember a year in the life of friends

How about love
How about love
How about love
Measure in love
Seasons of love
Seasons of love

....and then there was me.

This has been another Newy perspective.

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