Musings from Proverbs 4: Don't Abandon Yourself

Stephanie Womack
Oct 13, 2016
3 min read

If you’re on my email list, you already know about the 31 Day Proverbs Challenge and have (hopefully) downloaded the journal and been participating. If you’re not on the list and interested in the challenge, you can join here. I publish a weekly newsletter that allows my list to get the updates before it goes live to anyone else. During the Proverbs Challenge the content has been mainly focused on some key takeaways as I’m going through the scriptures and how it relates to my main topic areas, which are faith, focus, family and finances. As you can imagine there’s way too many takeaways from a week’s worth of Bible study to pack into the newsletter and still keep it manageable. I’ve opted to write short blog posts that cover some of the in-between that wasn’t covered in the weekly newsletter. Here’s my first one looking at a verse from Chapter 4…

I was really intrigued by Proverbs 4:6 “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her and she will watch over you.” In my Reflections of Chapter 1, I highlighted the fact that wisdom is personified as a woman. This personification shapes my lens moving forward. Every time the word wisdom mentioned, I envisioned that Solomon (the author) is talking about me (or you, if you are a woman reading this). This verse was piercing to my soul because, basically to me, this was talking about self-care. I’m not going to proclaim to be the self-care guru here, there are far better resources than I for that, such as Self-care by Aisha, a fellow member of the Happy Black Woman community.

I have learned and continue to be reminded that when you set the intention to accomplish anything, there’s a process. The process is like the fine print in an important document, we underestimate its value until we need it. The process is often not a part of the meticulously curated images we see that embody success online. To me, the process of growing my brand forces me to find balance between the vision and the value. I am responsible for creating and maintaining the intrinsic value of the content I provide. Part of the value has to be the value I put on myself, and not just my time, but my well-being as well. I have to take care of myself first to be able to think through new ideas, write content, work with coaching clients and book speaking opportunities, all of which are part of the larger vision.

Forsake means to abandon. So, when I read this, I read it as: Do not forsake yourself. You will protect you. Love yourself and you will watch over you! Everything you need is already inside of you. Trust your inner-strength and ability to overcome. Trust when you need to take a break, trust when you need help to figure things out, trust when you need to talk to someone for mental health. That trust is a part of your wisdom quota. Wisdom requires a great deal of introspection, meaning to assess your own mental and emotional processes. It’s true, that experience gives you wisdom, so if you know that not eating for 8 hours will give you a headache, therefore ruining your day, make sure you eat. It will get hard. You will feel like the page won’t turn. You will feel overwhelmed. But don’t abandon yourself in the process. The vision needs you because you bring the value.Take moments to celebrate small wins, keep moving forward and make self-care a part of accomplishing your goal.