What do you want?
I was sitting in church one day and I heard the Holy Ghost ask, “What do you want?” I immediately responded, peace, love, joy . . . .He stopped me and said, “I’ve already given you all of that, what do you WANT?” So at this point I had to stop and really take the question seriously. What would I give myself permission to want if I really believed I could have anything? I realized how hard that question was for me to answer because I had reduced my wish list to what my world had told me was attainable. To what my mother was able to achieve and my sisters and my neighborhood. I had reduced it to what I had seen other little brown girls on T.V. be able to achieve. Quite frankly, that list was small. My mind had created a life that was much smaller than the one that I could have, the one that was in my heart. There was this cognitive dissonance between those two worlds that was making me miserable and I had no idea until He asked me that question.
Since that day, I’ve been challenging myself to want more and as a consequence, I have had to raise my own perception of my value. I’ve had to raise my expectation of the world around me and my ability to build a world that was big enough to hold my true desires. Now, I work at wanting. I drive through high end neighborhoods and allow myself to dream of living there. I walk through high end store and imagine buying what I want.
It would seem like wanting more would create more frustration and for a while it did. As long as the wanting outpaced my perceived value, I was extremely frustrated and depressed. However, it’s okay because it’s now catching up and giving birth to a drive to create the world that I want to live in because I now believe in my ability to do so. There’s a constant tension between the dream outside of me and the dream inside of me and I’m coming to peace with living with that tension. I still struggle with turning on the heat when it’s cold and running up my bill over $100. But, then I also will turn around and invest $1000 in building a business website. Even I have to laugh at the absurdity of when and how fear shows up in my life.
Now, I’ll ask you like the Holy Ghost asked me, what do you want? I want to give you permission to want what you thought you’d never be able to have; a thriving relationship with a person that is faithful, unlimited earning potential, peace, a wonderful life. You don’t have to just choose one either, you really can have it all.
