Archive | October 2011

“I’m ten and I pose topless like my grown-up media icons do.”

Oct17

Down the road regret is something that awaits the person who thinks, “I’m young so I’m just gonna have fun and live it up.”  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to have fun, but there is a right kind of a fun and a wrong kind of fun.  There’s fun that costs you ten bucks and then there’s “fun” that takes more than you bargained for.  I.e. losing your virginity for the first time.  I have yet to meet a girl who does not regret losing their virginity to the guy they lost it to or the time they chose to do it.  Not. One.  Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “I don’t regret losing my virginity when I chose to do it.”  Well, maybe not enough time has passed for the consequences of your decision to manifest clearly.  Whatever the case may be, we ladies especially, can tend to make lots of emotionally based decisions that we end up regretting.  I write this because I want you to be done with the regrets.  Living a life of regret is not a healthy one.  I drank myself silly (or till blackness), more than a few times when I decided to illegally drink at the age of eighteen.  Do I wish I never did any of those things, yeah of course.  Blacking out because of alcohol is something I pray my future children never do.  How about all the loser guys I dated?  Oh boy, how much heartache I would have spared myself if I chose to just wait for the right guy.

We see dating, sex, drinking–all these things people are doing at younger and younger ages–and get blinded to the effects of these activities.  Thanks to the majority of media and the people they set up as, “icons” ten-year-old’s are starting to have sex with each other.  Look at how little girls are dressing and dancing.  Yes it’s the parents fault as well, they can somewhat monitor what their kids watch, but honestly, they cannot monitor it completely unless they lock their kids up inside all day and hover their every move.  The sex message is everywhere.  Don’t want your kid or little five-year-old sister to wanna be sexy, don’t take them to a mall.  In Aventura Mall, one of the largest and most popular malls in America, you don’t have to step a foot inside of Victoria’s Secret to see a sexy half-naked model.  She’s taking up part of an entire wall from top to bottom shouting, “Look at me, come inside, buy what I’m wearing, be sexy.”  Don’t take them to Abercrombie or Ruehl or more than half of the other stores in the mall either if you don’t want them to see nude pictures that are just barely revealing what’s supposed to be the “private parts” of their models.  Private parts.  I haven’t even heard that term in years!  It’s like nothing is private anymore, nothing is special, nothing is forbidden, nothing is off limits.

I plead with you, young or even older woman alike reading this blog to think twice about growing up fast.  Your body is sacred.  Call it a holy word, I say it’s simply a truth you need to know about yourself.  Yes, many people are–sadly enough–flashing their goods like it’s all dandy, but deep down, you know there’s something demeaning in that, something that doesn’t seem right for a ten-year-old to pose with top off and pants pulled down to one side in front of a camera for the world to see?  Doesn’t that picture of that little girl topless piss you off? What happened to little girls wanting to be like Cinderella and Belle?  Now it seems little girls want to be like Lady Gaga and Beyonce instead.  Will some real role models please stand up?  Where are you?  Are you out there?  Can you fight the current and do what’s right?  Can you be a princess, someone little girls can mimic without having to compromise their innocence?

Think before you do, before you try, before you, “have some fun.”  There’s little eyes watching you.  Little girls are looking for role models, especially if they don’t have a good one at home.  Do you want them to walk around like another mini- Beyonce and have sick old men undressing them with their eyes?  After seeing images like these, although I’m not condoning it, I can understand why there’s so many pedophiles out there.

Please ladies, stand up and be the princess icons our younger generation needs.  I beg you.  I’m a princess.  I will make sure I act accordingly knowing that when I step out of my house, I’m influencing someone.

“This person will make me happy.”

Oct10

“When we choose someone to be with, we should choose someone who is willing to make us feel as though we are alive every single day. Waking up to someone who we deserve will put a smile on our face every morning, and a smile on our face every night before we go to sleep. Someone we deserve will have us feeling alive inside, will be somebody that we are really attracted to, not only physically, but mentally, and spiritually. Don’t settle for what may seem okay, settle for being in love and being with someone who only wants to see you happy!” -Karla Dawn Robleza

*CAR SCREECHING TO A HALT SOUND*  NEWS FLASH:  THIS GIRL IS WRONG! 

When you’re first dating a guy, he may make you, “feel alive everyday,” for about…two months, tops (unless he’s like my husband who was able to do so for a few months longer than that).  Then, when reality hits, aka, life, you realize a person cannot, does not, and is not supposed to be the fire of your life, what keeps you going, what sustains you.  No human being can ever accomplish that feat.  They will never put a smile on your face every morning or every night.  Someday, they will mess up, and other days they will mess up too, just as you are prone to messing up.  They will say or do something hurtful.  Now, if you placed an unrealistic expectation on this person, like Karla did, then you will be devastated when they fail you.

Don’t place a person under such unfair pressure.  Sure they can make you smile and you can have many wonderful memories with a person, but they won’t always make you happy.  We human beings are pretty selfish.  We want ourselves to be happy first, then whoever we’re with to be happy and that, not all the time.  For us to come to a place where we consider others before ourselves is very difficult and quite frankly, unnatural.  How we can come to a place where we try (but inevitably will fail plenty of times), to consider others before we consider ourselves and with no hidden motives i.e. hoping they’ll praise how good we are or like us more, is by allowing God to do a work in our hearts.

We can’t make ourselves unselfish, it goes against our nature and is almost painful to do in our own strength.  But when we come to a place where we humble our hearts and believe we love because God first loved us and get to know Him, He can start to show us His heart and inspire us to pursue being like Him.  Before I got to know God, I never knew how selfish I was.  Even my very prayers were mostly, if not entirely, selfish.  It wasn’t until He answered a desperate cry for help one night that I began to pay close attention to who He was and began seeking Him out.  I did and daily, even until today, He revealed His heart to me.  I, along with my family, began to see changes very soon.  I was more patient with my mom instead of blaming my bitter attitude on her, “being annoying,” and would pray for things that I wouldn’t personally benefit from.  I’m not tooting my own horn, I am what I am now because of God.  Whatever good is in me, is only because I’ve asked Him into my heart and He now dwells in it.  And just yesterday a mirror was held up to me and I realized how selfish I was being in a certain matter.

So, no one’s perfect, nor ever will be.  There are times where I think of my own needs before my husbands (actually more often than I like).  I say this so that you understand a person can make you happy, but isn’t the key to your happiness.  I laid that burden on every boy I ever dated (and man there were a lot), and my, how many heart-breaks resulted because of those unrealistic expectations.  It wasn’t until that desperate cry that night that I said, “God You first now, not guys,” and I discovered He and He alone can give me complete joy.  He and He alone can satisfy every need my heart holds.  He gives and takes away.  He opens doors no one can close and closes doors no one can open.  Most importantly, He loves me like no person, no man, ever could.  My daily joy stems from knowing that, not the wonderful husband I wake up to every morning.  Heck, I had so much joy before I met my husband I told my sister when she was pressuring me to meet him, “I don’t want a guy, Jesus is enough.”  I pray you save yourself from another heartbreak and come to discover the same.

With abundant love,

Natasha

“Why do I still have feelings for my ex?”

Oct3

Ah, the line many of us have used at some point in time, or are using at this very moment.  “Why do I still have feelings for my ex? We broke up a while ago, and we broke up because of the way he treated me.”  You wonder why in the friggin’ world you still have feelings for a jerk.  You tend to think about him, or get teary eyed when you hear a certain song, or if you run into him your heart flutters and your stomach feels funny.  I have an answer:

The more sexual you are with a guy, the more feelings you’ll grow for him, and the harder the feelings will be to shake.

I’ve run into one of my last exes before my husband (Jonathan), who I was ‘in love with,’ and who totally broke my heart [a few times], after I was already in a relationship with Jonathan, and all three times I’ve felt absolutely no fluttery feelings.  The last two in particular I simply felt pity.  (He shared with me his dad had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and he looked pretty glum.) 

Now, why are all the very strong feelings I’ve felt for him before completely gone?  Because all he and I ever did was make-out.  Once he placed his hand on my breast (over the shirt), while kissing, and I quickly removed it.  Like I’ve mentioned in another post, when we ladies are sexually intimate with a man, our brain secreses serotonin causing us to want to bond with him more so basically, the more sexual you are, the stronger the bond(age) to that man is.

“That’s great to know, Natasha, but how the heck do I fight my feelings?”

Extinguish the fire as soon as it starts.  You hear a song that brings up a memory, you shut that song off.  If you’re in a situation where you can’t silence it, fill your mind with something else.  If you’re with a great guy for instance, think of how great this new guy is.  Just control your thoughts (believe me you can, you’ve just never tried).  If you have pictures, emails, are facebook friends, DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!  Don’t believe in that, “Oh, but they were nice memories,” crap.  He hurt you, it’s over, do away with it, or else you’ll continue to be haunted by past memories that are dead and should be gone.  You’re not with this dude anymore for a reason.  Remember that.

The less you think of a person and don’t see them, you do begin to forget.  If you have a new guy, create some new memories with him.  But, so the cycle of continued hurt feelings for exes stops, don’t be sexually intimate with this new guy (unless he happens to be your husband).  I can absolutely care less what “Cosmopolitan” has to say, and the songs and films about how you should have fun by having sex, and then breaking up, and then getting heartbroken, and then being depressed, and then having serious trust and insecurity issues.  How many of you reading this have gone through a heartbreak, or as I have, several?  I doubt you want that to be the story of your life.  If you think sex with guys who simply ask you out, and take you places (if they even do that), is fun, think again.  STDs, unwanted pregnancy, inability to bond with your future husband, disrespect from men, and lots of fights is what premarital sex causes. Somewhere along the line you may have lost your understanding of self-worth, of how much value you have.  Your heart and mind are inside of your body.  Your body is special,  it is to be treated with respect.  If you value your own opinion you should value the body that produces it.

Do you have one good reason as to why a guy who is simply a boyfriend or someone you dig worth having full access to your body?  What has he done to deserve it?  If he hasn’t knelt before you, spent lots of money on a ring and legal binding papers, and made vows to you, I’m sorry, but he doesn’t deserve to have sex with you.  Call my standards high, I just call them manifest.  Let me ask, what would happen if you told the guy you’re with that you no longer want to have sex with him?  We’ll see how great he is then.

Either step over, or stoop down to peer and societal pressure.  You’re more than you think yourself to be.

Now, if you are married or with the guy you someday plan on marrying and are having annoying ex-thoughts, do the same fire extinguisher actions I told you to do before and learn this,

“The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick—who can understand it?” 

How many times have you been completely confused over something that had to do with your heart, i.e. ‘what guy should I be with’?  How many times have you, ‘followed your heart,’ and went out with a guy that ended up trampling it?  Our hearts are tricky little liars at many times.  For us women, it’s what the devil loves to attack most.  Know that if you’re married, and you’re thinking about an ex, that isn’t God trying to confuse you, or tell you to leave your husband and be with your ex.  God hates divorce and adultery and lust.  He is the embodiment of faithfulness and loyalty, and desires for you to be the same toward the man you vowed to give those things to till death do you part.  So, when you get to thinkin’ about that ex of your’s, you know it’s not God.  Let it be a red flag in your life, something that gets snuffed out as soon as it kindles.  If you have friends that try and entertain the idea of adultery, or leaving your husband for your ex, stop talking to them.  Their advice is terrible, and will leave you desperately regretful.  I was listening to a radio station where a woman said she started talking to an ex through facebook. At first it was ‘innocent,’ but then they started talking on the phone.  Next thing you know, her husband caught her in her bedroom with the door closed talking to him, and up and left her.  In time she realized what a terrible mistake she made and wanted him back.  He was already with another woman, and she was fighting to win his heart back.  Don’t be that woman.  You married your husband for a reason.  You love him and he loves you.  Work it out.  God will bless you for it.

With love,

Natasha