Wow.
That's all I can say at the moment.
This challenge was a true eye opener for me. I struggle with keeping up my faith with God and trying to figure everything out. I had honestly just redownloaded the bible app. I wanted to start back my Bible In A Year plan, where you read various chapters in the bible that after 365 days you'll have read the whole thing.
If my memory serves me right I believe a friend asked me if I wanted to join in with them on this 10 day challenge: #DeeplyRootedChallenge
This particular challenge was created by a popular blogger: @sophrarush
She's a very spiritual woman and truly inspiring. Apparently she had already done this challenge before and it went off without a hitch. Essentially each person participating was to get blank painter swatches of various colors or just use what they have at home. It could be Post-It notes, flashcards, or scrap paper. Whatever medium you have you were supposed to write "Affirmations" to yourself and post them on social media using the hashtag from September 1st - September 10th. These affirmations should be positive and in most cases ended up being spiritual or bible scriptures.
I honestly had no idea what I was doing what I started. I didn't know if I should be picking out bible scriptures that could be used as words of encouragement to myself or write letters to myself or what have you. I even tried googling what an affirmation was which was taking something you don't like about yourself or want to work on yourself and turn it into a present day statement as if it were true. That just didn't seem right in terms of the challenge I was participating in.
After speaking with my friend who got me interested in the whole challenge in the first place, I resolved to writing short letters to myself. Sometimes I used scriptures and then explained how that applied to me. Sometimes I wrote a simple reminder to myself, a sort of pep talk.
The whole ordeal both fascinated and frustrated me at the same time. It frustrated me because I would think about a topic I wanted to focus on for that day and then I wanted to find a scripture that correlated with it. Finding the scriptures was what fascinated me. I would find a scripture, usually popular, and I'd skip over it. I didn't want regularly used scripture. I also wanted to make sure I was using the scripture in the correct way. I would look up any small sermons or blog posts about the particular scripture to get a better understanding of it. The most helpful thing I found was going back to my Bible app, finding the scripture, and clicking on it, then going to the "Related" section. Under that section I found other people's public notes on that particular scripture and their interpretations of it.
My major takeaway from the challenge was that sometimes it's hard for me to stop thinking so negatively about myself and this exercise allowed me to do some deep self reflection that I needed.
Check out my #DeeplyRootedChallenge below and drop a comment if you're feeling like it!