About a month ago, maybe a little more than that, I got an email about an upcoming book launch team opportunity. It was on a book called Authentically Anchored by Shonda Ramsey. I decided not to take the opportunity to be on the launch team, but I kept thinking about it. It’s like God wouldn’t let me forget about it. So, at the last minute I signed up, and I am so thankful that I did. Right away I felt a kinship with Shonda Ramsey. We have so much in common and we are alike in so many ways. It took me a bit to start reading, life gets so crazy for sure, but once I did I was hooked. I decided I wanted to take my time with these book. I wanted to really soak in the wisdom, take notes, journal, and get every drop of authenticity I could out of it. Shonda’s definition of authenticity is this, “authenticity means embracing the courage to be imperfect, to be messy in the presence of those who refrain from judging our chaos and choose to love us unconditionally.” I really love this, and it goes great along with Brene Brown’s definition of authenticity. Her’s is “authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” Wow! So much wisdom in those two quotes.
While I was reading chapter 3 of Authentically Anchored, I realized that I don’t think I have ever been truly authentic in my life. I have always tried to be the person that others wanted me to be so that I would be loved and accepted. I, honestly, don’t know why I kept up that habit because it never really worked. A few years ago I was introduced to Brene Brown and her books by my therapist. That’s when God really started working one me about being authentic, being who He created me to be, not who others wanted me to be. I am now committed to ripping off all of those labels that other people have put on me and applying the labels that God has given me. I want to live in my true identity as a much loved child of the Most High King. A quote I really loved from Authentically Anchored is, “ There comes a time when believing all the lies the enemy uses against us must stop, and that time, is now.”. I’m sending those lies back to the pits of hell, where they belong, and replacing those lies with God’s truth about me.
Chapter 6 of Authentically Anchored is about rekindling your passions. This chapter led to the resurrection of this blog. I remembered how much I used to love writing and sharing my thoughts with others. Hoping that, maybe, these writings would help others. But I quit writing. It has been almost 4 years since I have written a blog post, other than my most recent one I did a few weeks ago. I was telling my pastor about this, and he asked me why I stopped writing. My answer was that I put too much pressure on myself. I thought I needed a lot of training, and learning, that I needed to crank out so many posts per week/month, and that each post had to be amazing. In other words, I wasn’t being my authentic self with my blog posts, and I got burnt out. I do this with all of my passions. I love to take pictures, but I started making myself read books on photography to make sure I could take the best pictures, I wanted to be perfect in my picture taking. And that took all the joy out of it. I do this with crocheting. I have to do the most elaborate and perfect projects and these projects have to be perfect. I have to make so many projects and donate them to so many places. I mean, these are good things, but I wasn’t being authentic. Not being my authentic self with my passions took all the joy out of those passions, and left me burnt out and passionless.
“The negative self-talk that accompanies how I feel about my outward appearance isn’t loving my temple, it’s abusing it.” This quote is talking about your temple being your body. This really hit me hard. By being so negative about myself I wasn’t being honoring to my temple, I was being abusive. I was dishonoring God’s temple. I’m working on my self-talk, but y’all it’s hard! There are so many things that I have heard over and over throughout my life, whether by others or myself, that I completely believed them. Now I’m having to unlearn these lies, and relearn God’s truth about me. I’m having to relearn who I truly am in Christ. I’m having to learn my true identity. I feel as if I have been living a lie my whole life, and really I have, I have been living as a completely different person. Not as who I was born, but as who satan wanted me to be. But I say NO MORE! Again, I’m sending those lies back to the pits of hell, where they belong, and I’m replacing them with God’s truth.
Authentically Anchored by Shonda Ramsey is a really good book. It has lots of wisdom and really makes you think hard about who you really and truly are. If you have realized that you are not being true to who God has made you to be, then I highly recommend that you pick up this book, and maybe even the workbook that goes along with it, and take your time to work through it chapter by chapter. Let God show you who you really are, and how much you are truly loved by Him.
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