Tie It Off.

Today is my 34th birthday and I have to be honest with you…whoever said you come into your own and grow in confidence, depth and general bravado in your thirties is absolutely right! Every single day, I believe I am growing deeper in my identity and standing firm in who God has called me to be. As cliché as it may sound, I try to get alone for a few hours each year around my birthday to reflect. I ask myself what I have learned, what I am leaving behind and what I am taking with me into the next chapter. It just so happened that the day before I prepared to steal some time away for my pre-birthday ritual, my husband dropped a pearl of wisdom in my heart that would propel me into 34 with the renewed perspective that I needed.

James and I were having a conversation about forgiveness and moving forward. I love these conversations with him because he seems to consistently share a truth that I need to hear in that moment. This time around, he so simply said, “Monique, sometimes you won’t get the apology. You won’t get the closure. Sometimes you just have to tie it off.”

I thought about what he said for the entire week that followed and how the girl that previously  needed the apology, needed the closure and needed the resolution with the big red bow on top had transitioned. That girl has become a woman who chooses to accept the truth that sometimes resolution and closure comes with the individual and intentional choice to tie it off and move forward, independent from any circumstantial or external input.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve read about my marriage journey. It hasn’t been the fairytale that I imagined, by any means. It has been hard and has required daily work. However, the gratitude I have for how far we’ve come in the past three years is beyond my ability to articulate. The pride I feel when I look at James is proof that God’s grace is the real deal. I love my husband in a way that I never thought was possible. I cherish our laughter and that we decided to submit our marriage to God’s healing hands for His work to be made manifest in us.

One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced in our marriage is my relationship with his family. Strained doesn’t even begin to explain the exchanges I have had with his side of the family. I have been told by his siblings I wasn’t invited to an event, that my daughter wasn’t in a photo because the shot was only for “blood siblings and their children,” I’ve been told I wasn’t the woman for my husband and that if he married me, he’d be miserable and the list of hurtful experiences goes on. But, perhaps the hardest or most heartbreaking encounters I’ve had with my husband’s family has been being ignored and unacknowledged. Our anniversaries, my birthdays, my daughter’s birthdays, et cetera have all yielded radio silence. I’ve been in the same room with everyone and not spoken to or included. I’ve extended olive branches and they’ve been repeatedly rejected.

Instead of accepting those actions as a right and choice that they are completely entitled to, I’ve taken my sadness, frustration and hurt to my husband and dumped them at his feet. I’ve ruined a handful of intimate conversations with word vomit of my anger about it. I’ve asserted that I’d aggressively be protecting my heart and building impenetrable walls around my life in response to how I perceived the treatment I received. Above all, with each negative interaction, I’ve walked away refusing to move forward without an acknowledgement of my hurt and holding fast to my stance. And, I’ve done that because each of those interactions has revived the lies that I have battled for decades that say I am unworthy of love, friendship, celebration, joy or a healthy self-concept. Those interactions have replayed the question of, “what’s so wrong with me?” In my absorption and preoccupation with how I feel, I haven’t always taken account of how my husband feels or how my response to it has impacted the traction we’ve gained.

I’ve previously yielded to those interactions in my internal environment and within my marriage. As I’ve given way and place to them, I have failed to stand up and stand firm in who I am in Christ and what honoring Him in my life looks like.

I have wasted many of my days and forfeited so many joyous moments by allowing the treatment I receive by others to dictate who I believe myself to be. And towards the second half of this year, I decided I was not going to continue that trend. I set the intention, one that was further confirmed by the conversation I had with James, that I would ask the Lord to search my heart and reveal myself to me (tough prayer to pray!) and that I would choose to honor Him by being anchored in the joy, peace, love, forgiveness, repentance and soundness of mind He has provided as my inheritance.

I have a full day of celebration with my little family ahead, but the celebration that I hold the most dear to my heart in this 34th year is that I am pressing CTRL + ALT + DELETE and force quitting the negative internal programming that I’ve allowed to go on for far too long. I am tying off the wounds and the sins and shortcomings of my past and the broken pieces and walking free of the weights that I have allowed to stunt my growth and stifle my voice. I will walk in love and peace and not strife and self-deprecation. This is the year that I hold my head high, not because I am without fault, but because I serve a God who reveals my misgivings, heals them and loves me with an unfailing love.

I tell each of you that the pursuit of beauty, from the inside out, is the lifestyle I am choosing to live and want you to join me! It hurts. It’s not easy. It requires vulnerability that is not always the most comfortable. But, friends, it is so worth it! I encourage you to evaluate what you need to tie off and move forward from and do it swiftly so you can live a life full of love, joy, freedom and purpose.

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in [union with] Him [reflecting His character in the things you do and say—living lives that lead others away from sin], 7 having been deeply rooted [in Him] and now being continually built up in Him and [becoming increasingly more] established [e]in your faith, just as you were taught, and overflowing in it with gratitude. Colossians 2: 6 + 7

MJK