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    You dictate the life of a person so you can feel secure, steady. As long as you hold these keys, keys you violently took, you feel like a person. Your hypocrisy is seen and felt and diminishes the respect those around you have of you. Strange that you can be strongly disliked so quickly. Even stranger that you cannot find an ounce of humility to apologize. But is it really that strange?

    Red flags can be subtle, almost inconsequential actions and/or words, but there's a recurring pattern, of gaslighting, disrespecting boundaries, self-centredness. Everything is an offence. People express healthy jealousy, but this one requires that you be left empty, alienated. A phone call can never just be a phone call, a smile is flirtation, a greeting is a wanton invitation. 
    Why do you need to exert control and power over another person?  Why do you sweat to connect love and violence together? You must understand love as self-sacrifice. Self. Sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice that is imposed. Demanded. Commanded. Manipulated. Love is the will (the choice) to think beyond yourself, your feelings, in order to nurture your own and another's spiritual growth. You cannot claim to love if you are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot co-exist. [Do not ] cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.*

    A red flag is what it is.  It's a warning you mustn’t ignore. You don't ignore things in the hopes of them becoming better. Bad behaviours don’t retreat into oblivion; they grow bolder and greater and become destructive. Love doesn’t ignore red flags out of fear. It illuminates and confronts them. 
    As long as you desire to exert power and control over another person, or an aspect of an individual, you will never know what love is. Love is not enduring the abusive control of another in order to show loyalty and faithfulness and trust. "All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way."*  That's not to say that people and relationships are disposable, and when something within the relationship is not functional it's tossed aside. It is good to recognize when something is no longer healthy, when behaviours and actions are no longer exercised to nurture another, but rather to control and destroy their will. 

    When a person tells you that everything starts with them, leads to them and ends with them, there is no room for mutual growth. A relationship cannot thrive on self-centredness. It is not a place where we extract what we need. We pour into it what we desire. So when someone seeks to exert control and power over your choices, playing the authority of how your will ought or ought not be exercised, it is not a place you'll flourish. Dysfunctional relationships can be transformed into healthy, nurturing ones, but do not maintain dysfunction for the sake of connectedness and fear of being alone. 



                                                                             *SoulTea*



    *All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks.
    pic from @willyverse
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    Today, I wil do the work I set out to do. I will put away all distractions and focus on my tasks. Today I will sit in silence and hear what my Spirit is speaking to me. Today, I will take a step of faith by fulfilling an action toward my goals.  Today I will speak honestly about my needs and expectations. 

    *SoulTea*
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     I implore you to unlearn the systems of belief that have imprisoned your mind all these years. Take a sharp blade and run it over, with precision, the thread that tethers you to the past and all its destructive patterns. You cleansed yourself in blood and walked out radiant. You became a new creature, set apart, anointed; the blemishes from the past no longer marks of shame. They no longer exists. So then why do you keep referencing them? Why do you keep flicking up mud when you are dressed in the purest of garments? Why do you run your blade over your skin, searching for scars that have been healed? You will find them if you search. But why do you search? Is it to remind yourself of your imperfections? But you have been made perfect. I urge you to let it go! Leave the past in the past; don’t allow an idle mind to travel down a road from which you’ve been redeemed. Remember, He was bruised for your transgressions. Every time you unearth the past, you bruise him once more. Has he not done enough for you?
    You are pure and un-defiled, blemish free. 

      
                                         Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. |Isaiah 43:18|
                                                                                   -----------

    You are blessed with a magnificent temple. You are not responsible for the actions and thoughts of someone else. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are extraordinary; it stands to reason that someone will take notice. You glow and exude a glory greater than a thousand suns; you are forged with such intricacy and precision that I can only marvel from a distance, speechless. Everything about you is a work of great craftsmanship. I fear and desire you. I know you, and yet you are mystifying. I look at you and am spellbound. I am reminded that though you arouse wander and awe; I am not to possess you. It is forbidden. Yes, you are a rarity, one of a kind. You are of greater worth than the jewels that embellish a crown. Yes, as you are, you are the most beautiful of all gems.
                 
                                                                                  ~~~~~~
                                                                           
    Because you are precious in my eyes, and honoured, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. |Isaiah 43:4|



                                                                    ~SoulTea~


    Image via @blackexistence
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    Today I will soar as an eagle, I will rise above the challenges that come my way.
    I will take hold of my emotions; I control them, they do not control me.
    I am capable of accomplishing the tasks before me. 
    I am winning today.
    I am taking the blessing assigned for today.
    I am productive today. I am focused today.
    I am present in all my conversations and interactions.
    The outcome of today will not determine my joy.
    Today I have peace.
    Today I am forgiven.
    Today I have forgiven.
    Today is a good day.

    "Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed." |Abraham Joshua Heschel|
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    ~SoulTea~
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     Why is it that sometimes a lie feels better than the truth? Ever noticed how sometimes the truth doesn’t mend but destroys? That, instead of bringing comfort, it polarizes and brings loneliness?  Rather than setting you free, it feels as though it is drawing you deeper into bondage?

    Sometimes the truth is too much to bear. When you’ve spent time, effort, and resources to build and maintain a lie, giving it freedom to breathe and exist inside and outside of you, when the truth comes and shakes your foundation, it’s as though your whole world is falling apart. 

    Where do you go when your world is falling apart? Sometimes I lie down and let the feeling wash over me. And I admit to myself that I want control that I don’t have. I’m shaken and beside myself. My thoughts run wild and I can scarcely breathe. My entire body is ablaze with something. My brain is scurrying for a solution. 

    Honestly, I can’t have my way all the time. I can’t control everything, nor can I force everything to submit to my will. Look at my thoughts: they run wild. How can I possibly expect to command every minute detail of my day? Let alone anothers’? 

    Surrendering, initially, and for a while, feels like a loss. Even surrendering to God is daunting. But God has to destroy the lies I’ve built around myself, mend, and help me rebuild anew.  The difficult of new seasons is you miss the mark, drop the ball trying to force old wine into new wineskins. It’s disorienting to surrender the old. And the crushing, and pressing, and breaking of the old to steward something new is distressing. 

    In order to steward a new thing, often you must become new. Let go of the old ways of thinking and doing, let go of the familiar, and plunge into the deep—where you feel constrained and without control--but if you allow it, the experience may build you in inexplicable ways, and propel you into indescribable territories.

     **

    “Who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. And no one puts new wine into old wine-skins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wine-skins so that both are preserved.”|Matthew 9:16-17| NLT|



      ~SoulTea~
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    It is said:
    Wisdom is a woman. And woman, you are wisdom.
    You are not the wisdom of this world, borne of the will of man---his reasoning, science, feelings or experience; nor of common sense of this age. Your heart discerns beyond the confusion and chaos: you promise peace and security.  
    You hold in you a contradiction that perplexes me. You suffer long and hard, with the name of the Lord on your lips. Even when you are surrounded by chaos and confusion, deceit and betrayal, you lift your head in defiance, drawing on the cistern of a heaven that seems illusive most days.
    And yet I see it revitalizing you, empowering you, strengthening you. 

    It is said:
    …the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
    Heaven kept its promise.
    Your submissiveness and mercy is God-like, drawing confusion and misunderstanding. It is foolishness to the world, foolishness to me. But you continue to soar like an eagle above clouds saturated with water and flashing lightning. The rain pours down like a flood; but your crops hold strong and you produce good fruit.
    You look well to the  ways of your household…you eat not the bread of idleness. The work of your hands has sustained many; your hands have woven great tapestries that stretch across continents.  Out of the overflow of your heart springs wisdom borne in joy, pain, disappointment, victory, mercy, understanding...Strength and honor have become your clothing. 
    Remain a mighty pillar; even as you suffer for doing good know that you are blessed. You are a wife of noble character, one who surpasses all others. 

    Woman, you are greatly to be praised.



    ~SoulTea~

    pic via @thepanafrican
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    Chenai.
    28.
    The Lord has given me His words of wisdom....morning by morning He wakens me and opens my understanding to His will. Isaiah 50:4


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