31 Days of Stuff I Wish You’d Stop Saying: Day 23 “You Should…”

Thanks to my dear friend Kelly Balarie for guest posting for me today! Wise and fun! You’ll love her like I do!

POST: If I Hear Should One More Time, I Will…

By Kelly Balarie http://www.purposefulfaith.com

You should.

You should eat organic.

You should do cry-it-out method.

You should not do cry it out method.

You should be more gentle.

You should be more stern.

You should spend time with your children.

You should get quality time for yourself.

You should lose weight.

You should love yourself for who you are.

You should get right with God.

And you should really think about where you went wrong.

You should stop beating yourself down. Heck, you should just conquer the world why you are at it! Why not, you are a miracle woman. A “Hear me roar!” woman, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Aren’t you? If not, why not?

Other hidden messages from “should speakers”:

1. If you don’t fill this “should,” you may as well cover your head under the rock of “shamed” and stay there until people are extinct from the earth.

2. If you don’t respect my words, you should tell yourself to find someone else to respect you.

3. If you are dropping the ball, you are going to fall – you’ll destroy the walls of your life with permanent marker. Then, they’ll close in on you with every wrong that you simply can’t do right.

Sometimes, friends, I hate “should”. “Shoulds” are a bad friend on a bad night. They are the enemy to one who just needs a friend. They shut a mouth faster than a guilt-ridden 2-year old with his hand in the cookie jar. No one ever broke through to someone with the word, “You really should.” And, if they did, it only produced the lasting effects of guilt, which only lasts for about 1 minute.

It normally works something like this…

Impetus: You really should (fill in know-it-all response here).

Response:

1. Eye-wide-open look of “I am really dropping the ball.”

2. Internal spanking dialogue of, “Get it together. You can’t do anything right”

3. A self-shove where you try to make yourself fall into the so-called, “Promised Land”.

4. Short-lived agony through your stumbled works that don’t move you anywhere.

5. Resentment at that genie-in-a-bottle message-giver who did anything but flip your heart into the peaceful waters of self-love. I can’t help but think, when we bow to the demands of others, to quell our internal demands of poor-self dialogue; we only honor a path that leads our hopeful heart to self-defeat.

Unless, and this is a huge unless:

The words being spoken to our heart are words spoken from a heart beating from

the right place.

Not from a cold wall of judgment.

Not from fears of what our mis-directions might do.

Not from uncertainty of what an unknown future might hold.

Not in an idea that we should get what is rightfully ours.

Not from a standpoint that claims we are missing out.

Not from a perfectionistic slave-driving need for calm.

Not from a fear someone will leave.

Not from anger, meanness or badgering.

But derived from the action of love to push through a reaction of love. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. Eph. 4:15

We listen to love from others. Then, love works love.

We listen to love in ourselves. Then, love works love.

Suddenly, we move, because what we are moving into is greater than our self. It is greater than fear. It is greater than pain. It is greater than our efforts. For it is derived from a source that can go far greater than our inch-worm comprehension of movement. Love propels the loveless to live liberated. It propels the trapped to walk out of open cages. It rips off the Band-Aid of bad and puts on the ointment of relief.

Just as I posted in “Love Wins Over Impossibility,” http://purposefulfaith.com/love-wins/ love will win-out every. Single. Time. If you let it. If you let it’s power work out from you. If you let it tackle the barriers before you. Give it a chance. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 Jo. 4:18

So, at the end of the day, when you tell me should, I am going to ask myself, “Lord, is this based from what you could do in love or what others think I should do out of their fears?” I will be open to the wise, the caring and the loving –and simply let love be my guide. Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. Prov. 11:14

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Kelly Balarie is a cheerleader for the downtrodden, doubtful and defeated (because she so often is herself!). If you want unfiltered and uncensored truth, with a dash of reality life-confessions, then you will love Purposeful http://www.purposefulfaith.comFaith . Kelly will encourage your heart to unseenheights as she lets you see her life through the X-ray machine of “real”. At the same time, almost every time, she will send you away feeling encouraged. Join her on

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