Dealing With My Convictions

Conviction: a sense of one’s own unworthiness and badness; the state of being convinced of error or compelled to admit the truth

A month ago I started watching Kierra Sheard’s YouTube episodes and one thing that intrigued me was her transparency. Something that she would always mention was her convictions and how she dealt with them. The first couple of times I didn’t pay the word much attention, but as she kept mentioning it in multiple episodes I got curious about what it meant. I immediately went into research mode and looked on multiple sites to get the definition of the word in the context that she was using it. Of course, the top definition explained the word from a law/criminal aspect. Since she would say that she asked the Lord to help her with her convictions, I started to look up the word from a biblical/spiritual aspect. From my research, I got that when someone is convicted about something they have a guilty or bad feeling about anything that has occurred in their life. This could be a situation that has happened in the past or something that you may be presently going through. After learning this, I started to ask myself questions. Have I been convicted before? What are my convictions? Maybe I didn’t know what I was feeling were convictions at the time but learned something about myself through Kierra. After taking some time to think about and reflect on my life experiences, I noticed that I am definitely still dealing with some convictions.

Holding Grudges

I never thought I’d be the one to hold grudges against anyone until I found myself in that situation. I’m the type of person who will give someone a second chance if they’ve made a mistake. It’s when you take my kindness of forgiving you as my weakness to let you keep hurting me in the same way. With every incident you and I went through, I felt myself starting not to care about you. In my head, I’m thinking, “If you love me and care about me, you wouldn’t do the things you do and then lie about it.” I noticed that I was holding a grudge when every time I was around this person, my whole mood would change. I could be laughing and joking around and if this person came around me, it would be tension in the room. At that point I was allowing someone to have control over me without me even wanting to. I was giving them control over my emotions and essentially my life. I didn’t want to let this person have that authority over me even though I still hadn’t forgiven them for the things they continuously did. This is when holding that grudge against you became a conviction for me. A serious issue that still needs to be resolved to this day. However, it probably never will. I can only work on myself in this situation. I use to say “As long as it never happens again, I’m good. I don’t care about them anymore.” I’m still a work in progress because I’m not where I need to be to fully forgive this person. The first thing to dealing with a conviction is admitting that you have one. Maybe things between me and this person are better like it is. Maybe we’ll never talk again. Who knows? All I know is that I’m tired of holding the grudge at this point. Just to make things clear, me getting over the grudge is not me wanting to rekindle the relationship between this person. It just means that I’ve put the past behind me and I’m moving on.

Crossing Boundaries

When dealing with someone that I like I have to set boundaries to protect myself. It’s one thing to set boundaries but it’s another thing to stick to them. I’m great at setting and sticking to them until I get my feeling involved in a person. I’ve found myself in this predicament twice and looking back on it, I must say that I’ve learned that everyone who says they “care about you” doesn’t really mean it. Ladies remember when you’re mom or auntie used to say “guys will tell you what you want to hear just to get what they want.” She didn’t lie lol. So with that in mind, I always promised myself that when it came to guys to always set boundaries so I wouldn’t find myself in that situation. No matter how hard you may try sometimes things don’t always go the way you want them to. During my sophomore year in college, I reconnected with someone I knew from my high school days. Things didn’t work out with us back then because we were from two different cities so I was kind of happy to see that we were back on speaking terms. Those speaking terms quickly turned into much more. Speaking terms turned into linking and linking turned in spending nights. Because I was so into this person, I allowed him to push the boundaries. When I look back I questioned myself why I was so wrapped up him. Was it his demeanor? The way he carried himself? Was it the fact that he made me feel safe when we were around each other? Maybe it’s all of those and more. However, that shouldn’t have been enough for me to allow someone not to respect the very reasonable standards I set. Because at the end of the day that wasn’t getting me what I wanted from him- commitment. I just had to understand that we were on two different pages and wanted two different things from each other. Moving on I kind of put everything with guys on the back burner and started focusing more on graduating college, starting my career, and working on myself.

Straying Away

Growing up church has always been an essential part of my life. I grew up in a COGIC household with my grandfather being a preacher and my grandmother being a dedicated member of our church. I enjoyed going to church but I have to be honest and say that there were times where I just didn’t want to go as much as we were. I used to attend Sunday morning Sunday school and worship, Tuesday night bible band service, and Friday night YPWW (Young People Willing Workers) service. As I said, I’ve always liked church and traveling from city to city to worship, but as a young adult in school I wanted to do other things also. However, because my grandfather was a strong-willed man of God, the church was a number one priority and I respected that. It wasn’t until my first year in college until I started to completely stay away from the church. I didn’t have anything against church at all but I thought maybe this was my chance for the break I’ve wanted a while. I remember my first Sunday morning after I moved into my dorm, I didn’t go to church simply because it was my choice now. That first Sunday turned into a semester of Sundays which eventually turned into three years of no church. Now some reading this may think “Oh wow three years aint nothing” but as a young girl growing up in the COGIC environment it is a big deal to me. I had allowed my pleasure of making my own choices stray away from what I’ve known for my whole life. I felt so guilty that I stopped caring about church that I avoided everything surrounding it. I didn’t even listen to gospel for at least a year. In my mind, I felt like it would have been “startling the fence” going to church and doing the things I was doing. Something didn’t feel right with me partying hanging out all night and then turning around and praising in a church the next morning. I couldn’t seem to find a balance so I made a choice for the moment. After those years of not worrying about anything pertaining to church, I found myself missing it. It took three years. From 2017 when my grandfather passed to 2020 during my junior year of college. I’ve become interested in wanting to get closer to God now due to things that I have been experiencing and not forgetting my upbringing. Now I am currently thinking about finding a church home in Little Rock. I must say that I have never been so excited to get back into the church. I am in the process of finding the balance and I also feel that I am on the right path now.