Center

Our bodies are symmetrical for the most part. Your nose, your belly button, your private parts, the split in your butt... It's a pretty straight line, making it easy for us to find our physical centers. 

Genesis 9 says that God made humans in His image, reflecting His very nature. We are made to be walking, talking, feeling reflections of God. He is all wrapped up in our DNA, waiting to be discovered. He is our inner center and yet sometimes, that remains so unmarked. 

My inner balance - my "center" in my soul hasn't always been as easy to locate as that physical line that trails down my front and back side. There are a million things that happen during the course of our lives that make us believe more or less in people, God, the world at large... Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and God gets the blame in a lot of the bad and then no recognition in a lot of the good. 

I've found and lost myself over and over again. My identity has been previously wrapped up in my family, my ex boyfriend, my job, my weight, my city... And at each of those discoveries - each time I stopped and realized that who I was and how I was was being defined by someone else or something else, I've had to do a lot of work. A lot of sorting through what that means - finding healthy balances. Healthy centers. In some of those situations, separating entirely was the only solution. In some, I still struggle to figure out what a balance is. 

Our obsessions don't always present themselves as abusive. My family is the best in the world and there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to spend time with them and being best friends with my parents and brothers. Lines get crossed when I start to make decisions for myself that I don't feel are right and insert them into my marriage just to create a forced outcome of being in closer proximity to them. I put my family on a pedestal and wasn't willing to look at all the other practical factors (practifactors) that would affect my husband and I. Which leads me to my next point...

So, here I am trying to sort out this idea centeredness. Balance. And now I'm married. I love my husband so deeply. I've never gotten lost in him, our dating relationship, or our marriage. I know part of that is PTSD from a previous relationship where I wasn't a shell of my former self by the end of it, but another huge part of it was just who my husband is: caring, loving, encouraging. I've never felt I need to be a different person with him. He's only ever encouraged me to be the best version of... Me. There's so much comfort in that. Knowing that he stood in front of our families and friends and promised to always be with me, no matter what. It's not easy, but it happens. 

My sister-in-law gave me some advice before I got married about being myself and not looking to my husband to supply needs that only God can fulfill. I didn't understand it fully when she told me, but now that we're a little ways into our marriage it makes a lot of sense. Angel can't be my center. He won't be. Even if I tried to make him, it wouldn't work. That's something I have to go back to Genesis 9 for...

I was made in His image, to reflect His nature. And so be it.