There's a saying by Andrea Dykstra that "In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that shaped you." My thoughts on that quote waver depending on my mood, though I realize usually what I hate are the choices I've made that led to particular experiences. Part of healing from those experiences relies on my ability to forgive myself for those choices, and listening to a recent interview Letoya Luckett had with Aventer Gray gave me an idea of what that healing might look like.
In speaking on her journey to believing she's enough, LeToya said, "Every flaw, every negative, everything that has happened in my life has happened for a reason, on purpose. We serve an intentional God and so I feel like my testimony, just things that I've been through, they made me who I am and I am okay with every single scar now."
As the saying goes, It's the every single scar part for me. There are a lot of scars I've made my peace with but there are others that are so fresh it only takes the mere mention of a name or a light scratching of the surface of a particular topic for me to become undone. For Letoya, becoming a mother was an important part of her journey to self-acceptance.
"I have such a better understanding of who I am and I think that happened not only through marriage and getting older but becoming a mom and knowing what I want for my daughter," she said. "I'm like, I can't walk around here not being confident in who I am and not being true to myself and wanting that for my daughters."
It's a similar sentiment I had regarding turning 30 and feeling like I couldn't walk around not being confident in who I am and saying I'm a grown woman. But now with fewer milestones ahead and more mistakes to forgive, the work of believing I'm enough has in some ways begun again from scratch. Letoya, however, seems to have found the recipe.
"I feel I'm on the other side of that," she said during the interview. "I'm really okay with looking in the mirror and saying, 'sis, you are enough. You're not perfect but you're exactly who God called you to be. You're still working on yourself every day.'"
Check out the full interview in the video below.