Respect.

I'm on a journey. I don't fully understand it, I don't know exactly what I'm doing, but I know that I'm on a journey.

I had breakfast with a dear friend this morning, and as we talked about finding our passion, I said something to the extend of "I'm passionate about people being treated with respect."

I am. I think that wrongs should be righted, I think that people should have equal rights as a human race, and I think that we need to respect each other. Our lives are our own - our pain, our joy, our failures, our successes - they are ours, and we have every right to feel as sad about something or as happy about something as we want.

I'm cleaning my room. I'm even dusting thew walls as high as I can reach, and dusting the window sills. Things I never think about, but allow to become disgusting. All I can think to myself is: How in the world can I even think about general respect if I don't respect myself?

Because I don't respect myself. That's the fact. I don't respect my intelligence, my body, my heart, or my spirit. I treat myself terribly. Slowly I'm becoming more confident on the outside, but inwardly, I still talk down about myself. I'm far too hard on myself about everything. I've created an impossible standard that I will never meet, and when I realize that I haven't met it, it sends me into an emotional tailspin.

I feel like I'm starting from zero when it comes to my walk with God. I know that I love Him, and that I want to honor Him, and that's it. I've had enough personal experiences with God to know that He's real, but I've fallen out of trust in Him with certain things. I feel like a lot of my beliefs are things that I believe because it's just how I was raised, which is fine to a point because we need a place to start, but I want to believe for myself. But I don't want to do the work. And I don't want to find out that I believe something differently in a way that might offend people that I love and respect.

I have to become my own. And yes, I know, we are God's not our own, but I'm afraid to fully let God have me, to be honest. I feel like I let Him have all of me, because He dangled something in front of me that I wanted, and then just tossed it away to where I'll never get it.

And I don't want to bribe myself into having faith or trust because it will get me what I want. I don't want to be fake.

So I'm cleaning my room because I want to respect myself. I deserve a space that isn't dusty, or cluttered with bins of stuff that I'm not using and clothes I'm not wearing. I'm working out and eating better because my body deserves it. Not because I'm afraid of what people think of me and how I look - sometimes I worry, but not like I used to. But I deserve respect. I'm not going to over-invest my time and energy in things that don't edify me because I'll be drained and for what? An extra $100 dollars to spend? I deserve better than what I'm currently giving myself.

So that's my rant.

Love yourself. Treat yourself with respect.