Soul Detox

To my baby girl,

You know that feeling when you get home after a long, tiring day and you have a nice warm shower, wear some nice perfume and just sit there smelling nice and feeling clean and refreshed? I LOVE that feeling. It's honestly one of the nicest feelings in the world. And it left me with the thought, how often do we do this with our souls?

During our lives we fill our souls with many things. We fill it with images and sounds and feelings and memories and not all of the things we fill it with are healthy. In fact, we underestimate the power of our souls. We underestimate how important the condition of our soul is for a healthy, happy and purposeful life.

Our soul is like a plant. If we give it enough sunlight, water and nutrients, it will grow and live long and live happily. If all we do is pour mass amounts of toxins on it, it will die.

So I sat down and I asked myself, what am I feeding my soul with? I took a REALLY good look at the things I was injecting into my life and I decided to make some radical changes.

The first thing that came in to my mind was music. Music for the soul they say. Music has a very strange way of creeping into your soul and into your head and one day you will be walking down the street humming a tune and then you stop for a second and ask yourself, 'Hey where did that THAT come from?' so I took a good look at the songs that I listened to and the lyrics and message they portrayed. Do I really agree with what I am listening to? Is this artist someone who endorses or opposes my values and beliefs about life and people? If everything this person is saying goes against who I am, then WHY am I listening to it? It's kind of like saying, I will enjoy listening to my boss screaming at me in filth, as long as there is a good beat playing in the background.



The next thing I discarded from my life are movies and tv shows. Entertainment, we call it. I'm someone who LOVES watching movies. It used to be my way of relaxing and destressing. But I took a good long look at what I watch. Almost every single movie or tv show promotes sex outside of marriage, violence, disrespect, revenge, dishonesty, hate, injustice, foul language and twisted family values. You are lucky if you find ONE movie today that you can sit and watch with a 5 year old that will not teach them something bad. And we are fools if we sit and watch them and then walk away thinking 'Yes, I may not agree with that but it's only a movie' All that bad language you just heard, would you accept your 15 year old daughter talking like that at home? If your answer is no, then why do you tolerate a strange man or woman shouting filth into your home through a little box? If your answer is yes, you need to have your head examined. I feel like if I truly care about my soul, and if I have a choice in the matter, I don't want to fill it with images and sounds of everything I speak and stand against.

Eat Up!

Trash belongs in the trash bin.

Personally, one of the biggest changes I made was to quit facebook. I felt like facebook was a deadly parasite. It leached onto you and sucked out your life. It somehow made my perspective very narrow and limited. While many praise facebook for helping people to stay connected and build relationships, I have actually seen it do a lot of damage to relationships. I have heard people say 'It's not official until it's on facebook' And when I hear that I just want to cringe, because of how shallow life has become that even a relationship between a man and a woman is not valid unless it is on facebook. Facebook has just become a means to pry our noses into other people's lives and give opportunities for others to pry their noses into ours. It has stolen a lot of our precious time and has devlaued relationships to the extent that people barely talk anymore. They just poke each other like idiots and 'like' and comment on pictures of us doing lame poses in front of mirrors. It has become an excellent tool for men and women to prey on each other, leaving aside young children. It has also become a convenient sidekick for those who enjoy being unfaithful to their partners. It has become many things over the years and for me, it has become a giant drain on my soul. Some days when I log on to facebook and see the things that come on my homepage, facepalming myself is not enough. I wanted to be free of that curse.



Finally one of the major changes I made in my life was my diet and exercise. Food  and exercise are more for the body, I do agree. But a healthy body definitely contributes towards a healthy soul. And this requires a lot of discipline and the ability to say NO. This is very hard when you live in a country like Sri Lanka, where there is good food everywhere and every lady you meet over the age of 30, the first words that comes out of their mouth are 'eat eat eat'. But you have to learn to say no. I am strongly against starving ones self. You must eat well, but you must also eat healthy and over the last 1 and half months I've been working on disciplining my mind and body so that eventually, I would have a healthy soul. This means waking up a little earlier than usual to workout before going to work or saying no to the super yummy sweets or choosing to eat bran crackers for a snack (which taste like concrete) vs eating chips. All decisions you have to make everyday and consistently. But discipline for the mind, body and soul will take you far in this life.

 Anyway, I have to say life is wonderful. I was telling daddy, I feel like a completely different person. Like someone has dunked me in a big bowl of sunshine and rainbows. I feel light and free. Like nothing is holding me down anymore :)

But I have to say all credit goes to God, who has given me a new start in life. I have been drawing closer to Him now than I have been before and no matter what kind of challenge or circumstance Daddy & I have faced up to this point, He has given us the grace to face them all with our heads lifted high.  

And I leave you with this. Something I found quite alarming when I made the decision to quit facebook, was that SO many people wrote back to me saying 'I admire you for making this decision. I have wanted to quit facebook also but I've never really had the courage to do so' And it made me feel a little sad inside. Not because it had anything to do with facebook, but because I realized that too many people have the power to be free of the things that are holding them down but don't have the courage to. I guess somehow they feel like they might lose a part of themselves which has for many years so strongly defined them. But those very things that they hold on so tightly to, could be the very things that may eventually erode away on their souls and their lives.

So I encourage you, my love, don't allow material and worldly things to define you. Find yourself in Christ. For unlike this world, He never changes. He is rock solid and He is always faithful. Rid yourself and your life of things that will hold you down and things that you don't even agree with. You don't have to carry the burden and pressures and expectations of this world.

Be free. Be young. Be beautiful.

Love,
Mummy