The love affair has begun

Yes, the love affair has begun!
If you had said to me three months ago that I would eagerly sign up for a one-day event entitled ‘Relationship Intensive’ I would have been busily dialling the emergency services because you had to be crazy!  But as I waited for the doors to open in London on a cold and early Saturday morning I realised just how much had changed in those last three months.
I had picked myself up, dusted myself off and acknowledged that my life was what it was until it was something different and as the old adage says if it was to be it was up to me.

I had reclaimed the reins of my life and neither sickness, disease, financial challenges or family issues could take it away from me. I was ready to step out on purpose! I have always described myself as a divine original handcrafted by God but it was only on this new journey that I was actually willing to embrace it warts and all.

Three months ago I began thinking about how to embrace the pearls of wisdom I so willingly shared with others about how to enjoy their journey through life so that they showed up on purpose in person and on time. It was time to walk my talk!

I started by choosing my word for 2017 (write something about this) I was sure the word was consistency as I acknowledged that there was (plenty) of work to be done in that area. And then, of course, there were words like faith, believe, bold, bodacious (I love this word), abundance etc. in fact, the more I thought about it the more words I found and I busily began thinking about how they would show up during the course of the year.

After listening to me for a while the Holy Spirit intervened, my word was VALUE. I knew that was right immediately because it felt uncomfortable, it challenged me. All of the other words were important too, but I could work with them on a surface level. Value meant I needed to go deep!

And then it all made perfect sense I had wrongly placed my value in the hands of my earthly father and that seemed to continue to devalue each passing day. And everything started from there.

The extent to which I valued myself was showing up in everything I did and because we tell people how to value us you can imagine the ramifications!

I decided to embark on the love affair of my life. I was going to fall in love with myself all over again. I’m not sure I knew exactly what I meant at the point I made this decision, but I was determined to raise my game and afford myself the same courtesy I had so graciously given to others.

I started with affirming conversations with myself, walks in the park, taking gorgeous selfies to embrace the moment and generally thinking that I was fabulous just the way I am. The first signs of change came about in an unexpected way. I started going swimming early in the morning five days a week.  

At first, I could only manage four lengths without stopping for breath and then I pushed it to ten. One morning I tried something new, with each stroke I took I reminded myself that God was in me and I was more than enough. I pushed through and managed to do 30 lengths without stopping and the only thing that changed was the way I saw myself. I was excited and astounded. Two simple thoughts have changed my results. It dawned on me if knowing that God was with me and that I was more than enough could have this result in the swimming pool, where else could this work? I decided I owed it to myself to find out. My love affair had truly begun!

I had been talking about it for months. I had ummed and ah’d and procrastinated about putting myself out there but the truth is if I was going to find my husband I was going to have to do something other than just sit there. I had tried that and nothing had changed. I had talked about joining a dating agency but as I had always seen this as catalogue shopping I was a little sceptical. I had, however, met lots of happy couples who had met in this way so it was worth a try.  The worst case scenario would be lots of content for ‘Someone knows my husband’ blog and the best case scenario would be hanging up my single hat. As the smile crossed my face I knew I was ready!