My sister gave me this book for Christmas about 30 moons ago, and there it has sat on my shelf.  So this week I determined to start to read it.  Better than that, I finished it too.

There are a couple of dwelling points that I haven't thoroughly dissected and assimilated into my 'thought closet' yet.

The first flies in contrast to what had made sense to me from other self-help genre - being that you either have or don't have a sense of value in a relationship.  That discontent is an absence of feeling valued by the other half.

Instead as I interprete what Jennifer says, placing the onus of proof on the other party for our sense of value is erroneous.

She writes:

I entertained thoughts like If he really valued me he would pick up his clothes and lower the toilet seat.  I thought if Phil did something I didn't like, he did it because he didn't care about me.  When he handled things differently from how I would have, I thought his priorities were out of line.  I assumed it was all about me.  Does that sound like a faulty assumption to you?

So if you can't deduce value from what a person does or doesn't do in a relationship, how do you get it?  Do you have to have a sense of value that relies solely on yourself and then doesn't that create independence not interdependence.  Some would call that an inflated ego.  Isn't a marriage a place where you consider the other and therefore put their needs first (at least some of the time)?  If you knew that something you were doing or not doing was painful, or creating more work for another, would you keep doing it?

The second idea makes sense to me more now having seen many forms of self-actualisation in my working and church life.  The women spoken about is she who sought healing from Jesus by touching the hem of his garment.

Jesus never said her soul talk made her well.  He said it was her faith. Her faith invited healing.  Her soul talk contributed to her faith, but it didn't replace her faith.  She spoke truth to her soul in the same way you and I need to speak truth to our souls.

...

Soul talk can never be a substitute for faith.  The woman could never have talked herself into healing - not in a hundred years.  But she did talk herself into seeking Jesus, and that was all she needed.

Soul talk is faith's companion, not its replacement.  Soul talk cannot be a replacement for prayer either.  Talking to your soul in exclusion of talking to your Father in heaven is never enough to bring healing to your issues.  When soul talk is independent of our relationship with God, we are destined to be frustrated by our own human limitations.

I like that.

"Self Talk, Soul Talk: What to Say when You Talk to Yourself" is by Jennifer Rothschild.

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