love yourself – Aspirational Adventures

No Fear

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

July 9, 2026 – Bible verse of the day – DailyVerses.net

I haven’t written on this site for a while. I’ve been concentrating on my Substack and poems and stories but this verse has been pottering away in the background of my mind even before I read it on Daily Verses.

It is that last bit “the one who fears is not made perfect in love“. Now I know that John is saying this is perfect love in Jesus, or that’s how we are taught it in Church and Bible studies. But what if it has a lot to do with not fearing because we have been healed of our past traumas. I think Paul meant something like that when he said

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,

Philippians 3:13

I believe when we full heal we might be able to remember the event but we forget the deep pain, forget that part that dives deep into our core, into our bodies. When fully healed we no longer react automatically, no longer are open to stomach pains, headaches, and other bodily pains that we often don’t know where they come from. When we are fully healed our bodies can forget the pains, forget the traumas, forget the automatic responses.

But I think we can often only do that when we fully love and know we are fully loved – whether that is by the God who created the Universe or by The Universe, or even by ourselves.

The more I think about it the more I don’t believe we can fully know the love of God/The Universe unless we fully love ourselves and fully see ourselves deserving of love. Until we believe we deserve that perfect love we will always be fearful. Fearful that we’ll spoilt that friendship, lose that job, not have enough money, not be liked, not be a good enough Christian. etc. I’m sure you can add more to that.

But if we believe we deserve that perfect love then we are not fearful, not expecting to be punished, have let go of the past. Only then are we ready to strain towards the future – whatever that maybe – hand in hand with perfect love.

Content With Solitude

This is where I was sat when these thought came to me. I’m going to try to work out how to get them onto photos but just wanted to share them today

Also want to link this to blog from Deepak – Choosing Happiness in all the Wrong Places because I think we are saying similar things with different words.

Solitude – a place where you can sit with the chattering monkey thoughts and let them slowly settle to the river bottom; where you can stay in that place of peace and wait to see what rises again to the surface

Diane Woodrow – June 2025

Being alone doesn’t mean that all that random “monkey chatter” isn’t there. You don’t feel instantly serene and at peace with yourself and the world. But, I believe, if you don’t sit alone for long enough and allow those monkey thoughts to settle, then wait and allow what God/The Universe wants you to consider at that moment, you will never reach peace with yourself.

So to me when I sat by the sea, just me and my dog, I let the thoughts that were bubbling in me about various things rise to the surface then fall to the depths. I didn’t try to pick any out to think of but waited to see what rose up. I then gained some interesting insights into myself and why things unfold as they do and also about a project that looked like it was failing but was going the wrong way. But I had to sit without an agenda, without people pleasing, and trusting to listen to my heart.

Solitude is a place where you can be fully in love and fully trusting in yourself and just being

Dollar Glen, Scotland – June 2025 – photographed by myself

Solitude is glorious when you can see and know yourself in all that you are – your strengths and weaknesses, hurts and joys, mistakes and triumphs – and know that you like and love yourself just as you are at this moment in time.

Solitude isn’t a place of loneliness. Loneliness can happen in a crowd, especially when you are trying to be someone you are not, when you are trying to please others, when you are afraid to reveal who you really are, when you don’t feel like you fit in.

Solitude is a place of calm, of peace, of being, of knowing who you fully are, of knowing what you fully want to do.

Solitude, I believe, is something you can take into a crowd and enjoy who are you with because you are being fully you with no agenda for yourself or for those you are with. Things don’t have to go a certain way because you are calm within yourself for all that time of being alone.

But this can only come about if you are willing to take time out from the noise and hassle of the life we lead, can let go of those monkey chattering thoughts and listen to your heart.