hey ladies welcome to the boss bab Sanctuary so today's episode I want to talk about making this your as year if you listen to the previous episode I mentioned making this my Esther year and you're probably saying okay Michelle what is that and I want to talk about that a little bit in the Book of Esther what always stuck out to me about Esther and listen Esther is a phenomenal woman right she sounds beautiful but what always stuck out to me y'all was that one year of pampering that Esther did now if you're not familiar with the story of Esther it's in the Book of Esther okay it's like 10 chapters long it's a very small book you can read it literally within an hour or two there's this King xerses and xerses has a wife and his wife is bashy at the time she's the queen and xers basically throwing this banquet because of you know it's a king I'm showing off my wealth I've had a great year Etc I want everyone to come and celebrate how well the kingdom is doing well while he's putting this together and all you know the important men from all of these different providences are there he now calls on his wife vashi now I want you understand something vashi is off to the side having her own women's empowerment meeting the scripture says that you know vasy vashi was having her meeting with these women so they go interrupt her in the middle of her meeting to let her know like the king wants you to come to him so he can show off essentially your beauty well Bashi did not appreciate that she did not appreciate the fact that you are pulling me away from my sense of power and authority right now so I can go reduce myself amongst these you know drunken men right well she rejects and says she's not coming now you can only imagine a king I'm happy I'm bubbling go get my fine wife so you guys can see my fine wife and Vash was not in the mood to be objectified in that moment well she declined and in the process of declining it angered the king so it completely shifted the entire mood in the celebration and yeah and he was pretty upset he was pretty livid about it so he goes and speaks to his advisers and says what should I do and the men said something that was true it was wise they said well you need a new Queen you need a new Queen because what this woman just did is going to create a culture essentially where all of these women are essentially going to think that they can disrespect their husband because if the queen can say no to her husband and I am not getting up to do that then it's going to create a culture where every single woman does not respect the Authority or the power of their husband Etc so he agreed now pause real quick because boss babes this this story can anger you it angered me too okay when I was younger reading this story it angered me and I never understood how a woman standing up for herself and saying that she does not want to be objectified how that was such a problem and it wasn't until that I mature in my faith and God helped me to understand and let's be clear that culturally there's a lot of imperfections in different cultures in the word of God so let's be clear so you have to be able to read God's word and get the wisdom in it because you will experience people who are in a culture where they do things a certain kind of way and it's messed up and then you can think that God is co-signing that culture he's not co-signing that culture but he will also help you understand why people made certain kind of decisions in that environment so going to God and getting out of this mindset of being so angry just feeling like the Bible is is you know trying to objectify women in that way in that story I'm like trying to understand why this was okay with vashy and what God revealed to me I feel like in his wisdom um is that the reason vashi what she did was such a problem is because it's okay to feel like you are a woman and you desire to be respected you desire to be honored you desire to have all those things there's not a problem with that the problem is is that vashi number one her throne was established by her husband the access that vashi even had to these group of women that she was influencing is because they were a part of they were wives to men powerful men and powerful men who were under the leadership of her husband so outside of her being the wife to xerses she may not have the power to influence these women in the way that she was influencing so she had to understand that her position is political as well yes it's a marriage but you have a strong a powerful political position because you literally can influence the households of millions of people simply because of the man that you're married to so you are an extension of his power and that's true today right who you marry is an extension of you people like to ignore that sometimes but it's when life happens or there's certain instances or experiences that we have we begin to see that it's because of who we're allowing ourselves to look like we're an extension of you've seen plenty of times where you see women you have so much respect for them right they seem amazing Etc and then you meet their husband and all of a sudden you're like okay that is not a good extension of you he is not a good representation of you how many times have you seen that you've probably seen the reverse as well okay so how you represent your partner is very important so in that moment vashi denying going politically her decision that her power and the respect of her power was more important to her in that moment than helping her husband maintain his political respect forgetting the fact that her power that she's defending okay and her autonomy whatever you want to call it that she's defending the only reason it has the influence it has is because of her husband so her husband losing political respect it does not serve her it does not serve her so what could she have done differently fashy in that moment she could have went in M helped her husband maintain that political power and then had a conversation with him privately to let him know how that objectifies her and how she doesn't want to be put in that position again or even if she didn't go do what she told him to do she can go make her presence known and go talk to her husband and say babe I'm not feeling well etc etc so I just wanted to love on just want to say hi to everybody etc etc etc you know what I mean like she could have approached it in a way with a feminine touch let's say that she could approached it in a way that still honored her husband but used wisdom to honor herself in the process but in that moment she decided that I don't care who you are I don't care who your title is you don't tell me what to do do I'm not getting up for you to entertain you and your little drunk friends I'm good on that right and how many women can say like yeah I'd have that same attitude okay so this is where you so easily could get moved out of your position and say and I understand we live in a culture where I don't need to be in that position anyways I get it I listen I get it but I just want you to understand that if you do want to maintain right relationships and things that nature that's something you want to be mindful of anyways list move forward now what happens is is that now they're looking for a queen they need a queen to fulfill this role so they take every young virgin from around you know the providences and they are brought into essentially the king's her court and they all have you know different let's say caretakers that are there for them and that are in charge of this Herm of women and their job is to pamper these women for a full year y'all I could not get over the fight that these ladies were pampered for a full year in preparation to meet the king now he's only choosing one wife now but every single woman has to undergo the same transformation the same process of self-care and pouring into themselves before they're even able to be seen by the king and as angry as that story of vashi would make me I was always so in awe of that is the process or the experience that Esther and these other ladies were having and what it makes me sit there and think about is the fact that many people if you talk about how a woman is going to prepare to be a wife they would talk about taking a birthing class they would talk about taking a parenting class they'll talk about taking a cooking class A house manager class there are all these tasks they're going to tell you that as a woman you need to be prepared to do if you are now going to be preparing yourself for marriage think about this think about it if you talk to any woman about how they're going to prepare themselves for marriage they might tell you that they're going to take a communication class it's all of these things how many women are going to tell you the way that they're going to prepare themselves for marriage is by taking care of themselves they are going to prepare themselves to enter into the presence of of a king or to be courted their preparation for that is by taking care of themselves wear getting used to wearing the finest because remember this is a girl that was an orphan if you're not familiar with the story Esther was an orphan she was being raised by Mori okay so here it is this orphan girl in this environment where she has no mother no father she's trusting the leadership of this guy at the herum because he found favor with her and her job now in this environment is to just allow yourself to be pampered allow yourself to be pampered that speaks volumes that speaks volumes because that means as a queen one of the roles that's most important for you is to take care of yourself the better you take care of yourself think about it because you're going to be with the king and he was willing right to objectify vashy that means that there's a role that a woman plays in his life and he wants a woman to play that role so out of all the ways that he could prepare a woman for that role of being a queen and having access to all that political power because I'm sure if Esther went through that process when he chose vashi she probably went through the same process as well so you're taking a woman a woman's going to have all this political power where she can have influence over millions of other women in the households of other men as well she has this high respect she has this high regard she has all of this and you're telling me the way you are going to prepare her for that is by one year of her learning how to take care of herself now obviously looking at vash's story I'm sure learning more about political because I'm sure that learning about politically how to communicate to your husband or understand your role I'm sure ble probably could have used more training in that area but that's not to say during that year that's not something that she learned because there's a part in the scriptures where they had to go see the king and they had to wear something or bring a gift or something what it was I forget what the story was I'll probably put it on the screen and the guy that was over adessa I think it was a unic he recommended to her usually when they have men you know in that um role they're usually Unix but he recommended to her what she should bring in the presence of the king he would make recommendations to her so that she could win favor with the king so politically even while you're going through you're undergoing this intense self-care process you're still politically learning how to maneuver right there's a lot of things that you're learning through osmosis being in that environment but my whole thing is that the King was so intentional that make sure these women take good care of themselves for the next year before I even choose one of them so imagine if you're sitting here you're getting ready for marriage right or even if you're already married or in a relationship think about all the things that you did in preparation for getting in that relationship if you did prepare at all did any of it include taking care of yourself taking care of yourself most women would say no because most of us think about jumping into a relationship and sacrificing I was having a conversation with my sister the other day and I was laughing about it cuz I was telling her about how it's so funny to me the things that as women we were talking about something I was watching and we come from an environment in a culture where marriages extremely important we can't come from a Haitian household it's extremely important so I was having this conversation with my sister recently and I was talking about like a post I saw on Tik Tok or something and it was someone basically saying something to the effects of women you know really take care of yourself because it was letting them know like this is not a joke these are some of the things that women go through and relationships and how much years it cuts off your life something in that effect and there were women in the comments basically saying like they were in this kind of environment this kind of relationship this kind of situation and when they ended the relationship different sicknesses that they had different things that they were dealing with like that stuff left them and I was talking to my sister and I said it's amazing to me how much we can have such a desire and a hunger to be in a relationship and to be loved and things of that nature yet most of the times when women are talking about being in relationship they're not talking about how a man is going to come in and serve them and support them Etc often times they're talking about what they're going to do so I told her I said it's amazing to me how much as women we can be so in a rush to go sacrifice everything and I said to CU me and her were just was talking about earlier that day about a job I said because no one sits there and says oh my gosh God please please please give me a job so I can give it my all so I can you know practically be on the edge or the brink of dying because of the fact that you know I'm taking care and I'm nourishing this this job please give me a job where I can give it my soul where I can give it my everything please give we would never beg to be in a predicament where we're going to go to work or whatever it may be and begging for an environment that's not going to treat us properly or pour into US yeah think about how many of us will think about the desire and the hunger to be in a relationship and all we will be thinking about is how we are going to be of service in this relationship now there's nothing wrong with being a nurturer but I'm just telling you how that's a sickness within itself when all you want to do is poor poor poor poor poor but you're not thinking about how people are going to important to you that's a sickness and that's not attack on you that's something that I need to make sure even within myself that I am mindful of right because when you grow up in environments this goes back to you know that hyper Independence that savior complex that hyper vigilance and all of that when you grow up in environments where your interaction with people other human beings is how you can serve them you begin there's a pathway that's created neurologically in your brain where you equate relationship ship with people with pouring so when I'm in a relationship with somebody so that I can pour into them that's it so you see yourself as a utility you see yourself as a tool because your functionality and all your relationships especially growing up in your household is as a tool so you don't see yourself as someone that when I step into a relationship I'm here to receive and you may not even be as open to receiving as you should be so again going back to Esther I think about the fact that you're not even allowed to see this man until you can receive for a year imagine if God was telling you is that until you can receive my love until you can receive my care until you can receive all these things the things that you're believing me for the things that you want me to do and let's say if you're praying for a husband that will not even be revealed to you until you learn how to receive from me for the next year and we're no I don't want to receive no let me give let me give everything so I say all that to say I'm like this is my Esther year this is the year where I am so intentional about my self-care now self-care is something you guys already know that you know I preach about that's so important to me it's so important in your transformation Journey um it's so important in your healing Journey if anything made me like really really really prioritize self-care it was healing because as you begin to heal and you go through your transformation that is very heavy so you need to be able to nourish and take care of yourself but for me this is a year where I take it to another level it's not just self-care you know mentally emotionally spiritually now I'm adding in that physical element even more I'm adding that Financial element even more I'm adding in other aspects to to enhance that self-care so for example um I have a birthday coming up hey February 9th um my birthday so when I have my birthday here right there might be some little things that I want to do for myself give you an example right there's other there's some different Beauty things that I want to do I have a interview that I have in mind that I'm excited um to set this up because I think this is going to be so Ben iici for those of you guys that you know are interested in Beauty and things of that nature but there's different things I want to do for myself just to pour myself from a beauty aspect okay it's my year I'm going to do that you feel what I'm saying if I want to go get my teeth done it's my Esther year I'm doing that what I'm saying is that in all the ways I want to pour into me I'm going to do that if I want to go hire some trainer I'm going to do that it's my Esther year it is the year Where You Are so intentional about pouring into yourself pouring into yourself because all the things that you're making excuses about why you can't pour into yourself you don't make the same amount you don't make the same amount of excuses for other people when they want you to pour into them you actually feel guilty when you can't show up yet when you don't show up for yourself you don't feel guilty so imagine if you had a king like King xerses that says you can't even step into you can't even step into the possibility of the new thing that I desire to do with you until you learn to prioritize taking care of yourself so I think about even myself and the different things that God is doing in my life and it's like okay you want let's say Okay God um what's my purpose okay God you know what am I supposed to do with my time or what what's the vision for the business what's the career what's all these things he's like I want you to prioritize taking care of yourself you want to go out there so badly and you want to put this cape on and you want to go save the world but I want you to take time and actually learn how to properly take care of yourself stop trying to be the strong one stop trying to be the one that has all the answers stop trying to be the one that figures it out and actually nourish and pour into yourself like imagine if God made you do that and often times maybe God is already making you do that because you are having this thing where you're reaching out to him and you're looking for clarity about this God what's my purpose what my purpose what my purpose and he's like I need your purpose is right now is to trust me to trust me and the things that I do tell you to do day by day just do it and you're like oh my gosh no I need to know I need to go I need to go no you don't you need to sit down and let yourself be loved let yourself be pampered let yourself be taken care of you need to pour into yourself you need to learn how to do that for the next year because now imagine if God does not allow you to have this period of time like I think about me and I'm so grateful to God because I believe that this Esther year that he's doing he's doing it for me intentionally because imagine I just quickly step into the next thing that he has for me and I have not learn how to properly take care of myself and now I'm in a higher Dimension where I have more responsibilities and more people you know that are tugging at me and pulling at me and I haven't learned how to properly take care of myself and now I'm in a higher position a higher role and I have not establish that fundamental principle of actually taking care of myself myself and I believe that God in a way is like King xers not in the misogyny not in the objectifying you no that your self-care matters to him your self-care matters to him so much so that he will make it a requirement I mean we're talking about a God that made the seventh day resting on the Sabbath day he made it a commandment can you imagine 10 commandments and he made you resting one of them out of all the things just look like we've entered into a new you know um reign in America in terms of who our president is and on day one I believe Donald Trump signed 26 executive orders now do you think that we have ran out of rules in America no so we're making new rules we're making rules to cancel the rules that previous people made like there are so many acts like if you ever gone um to the United States government's website and you actually look it up like just beginning with the Declaration of Independence and you know the Constitution like we have documents after documents after documents filled with rules and laws and or all of this stuff so that's how much we've created as humans you can only imagine The God Who created the universe how much rules he can come up with and you're telling me out of all of these he collects he comes with 10 and one of the 10 is you resting one of the 10 main rules that he say the fundamental rules the fundamental the fundamental rules is you resting so our self-care matters to our god plain and simple if you don't believe that God bless you love you go ahead enjoy your life without it but I believe that our self-care matters to God and I intend this year to be so intentional about living my life like it matters to me too like it matters to me too so not only does that mean like the different you know habits and rituals and things like that that I'll be switching up and doing to support myself but I'm also looking forward as I mentioned in the previous episode to bringing in you know people who I feel like have really mastered different areas and I feel like will bring value to my life and to your life where they can share you know their expertise and just the nuggets of wisdom that they have on how they can help us better support and help ourselves in this intentional year so even this environment right now that we're in this is a part of your selfcare whether it be from a spiritual nourishing perspective mental emotional physical Financial whatever it may be this is an environment to help you nourish yourself so that you know you're experiencing growth and Improvement in that area there's different things that you're going to want to do whatever that is you go to God and you have a conversation with him about it I will say this though March 1st if you're interested let me know if you're not familiar have the beauty fores program the beauty for program is where you learn how to surrender your Survivor strength and embrace Divine empowerment it also comes with the 21-day Faith Center transformation guide March 1st what I believe I'm going to do is a challenge or I'm going to put together like a community event I want to say where for those of you guys that want to Kickstart this Esther year you can join me in that 21 day fast um March 20th I believe is technically the new year right so even though we celebrate January 1st being the New Year many cultures around the world Spring is the new year because spring brings life right so typically January 1 we're still in the middle of winter winter things are dying spring is when things are coming to life so that really marks the actual New Year so with that being said we're going from March 1st to March 21st that will be us walking into the new year with that so that um program the Beauty for AES program that really focuses on you releasing that survival strength so you're dying to that that strength that you've been relying on that you've been utilizing to get through life it's time to die to it so if that's something that you are interested in um go ahead click the link in the bio um use the code Freedom it will give you 48% off there's an entire program it has the workshop attached to it has everything that we need um you're also going to have the Facebook Community divinely empowered woman Community you can join us there and then every single day obviously individually we will be doing our work to support you in that process with other women who decided that they're going to be focusing on releasing releasing this survival strength and embracing Divine empowerment because it's going to be essential because you're going to have to let go because again like can you imagine if it's time for you to take care of yourself and you're like no but I can't do it I can't do it I can't do it like how is not taking care of yourself serving you or how is constantly showing up for other people and not showing up for yourself like how is that serving you so you really have to get down to fundamentally what is really going on at your core that makes it such a problem you will find that many of you guys are struggling with self-worth issues there's abandonment issues there's rejection issues there's trauma there are things there at your core that tells you that doing this it's not okay or you don't feel like you're as deserving or it's not a priority for you and often times we're not a priority for ourselves because people did not treat us like we're a priority so we have develop this habit of pushing our needs to the side and making other people's needs a priority this is a conditioning this is a training but that doesn't mean that's the way of life and that's the way things should go so this next the 21 days that we're going to be doing beginning March 1st here if anything changes I'll be sure to let you guys know but from speaking from me really just going through this and really talking about God about this I really feel like March 1st is when we're going to begin we are going to begin doing that divinely empowered woman really stepping into that really stepping into that and releasing that survival strength because in order for you to live a soft life in Christ anyone that knows me that says Michelle that's all I care about living a soft life in Christ in Christ okay all that extra hard stuff you guys want to do have fun go ahead but even in the of me walking in my purpose I don't want to be doing it hard can you imagine that I God has called me to do something for him and I'm trying to figure out how to do he called me to no no it's really living a life of surrender and in order to live a life of surrender you have to trust God you have to trust God you have to trust God in every single area I saw a woman today she posted something I'm like oh I love that she said that every time she makes a purchase she asks God for wisdom about the purchases that she's making she said the reason she started doing that is because she found herself constantly buying stuff and wasting money because she wasn't using it she didn't need it so she would actually sit and talk with God she said she was recommending people do that I'm like oh my gosh I love that because I know he'll step in God any area where you want God to help you in he will step in one of the ladies in my group were talking about hair care and how you know there was different things that we were dealing with our hair and we went to God and said God can you help us in this area with our hair and he will provide you a solution to help you he will provide you a solution to help you but so many times we think that we need to do it by ourselves or that's too that's too small God doesn't have time for he's too busy you know he's too busy keeping the Sun up and the moon up he can't take his hand off the sun in order to deal with us the scripture says that on the seventh day God rested he created everything and said it's good it's good but we have in our minds that he's too busy doing all of this stuff that he doesn't have time for us when he had so much time that he rested I always say to people do you really think that after God created everything and said I'm done did God ever come out of rest so everything God is doing he's doing it from a state of rest God is not in panic God is not in fear he's not in anything is it is done it is all done and we need to understand that we serve a God that it is done and get in alignment with that energy get in alignment with that mindset get in alignment with that spirit and that's not easy to do when our brains are telling us that if it has to be it's up to me if it must be it's up to me no you surrender that you surrender that thought you surrender that ideology you surrender that mindset but again it's easier said than done so these next 21 days obviously you know scientifically it takes 21 days to break a habit but the 21 days of fasting is really going to prepare you to release all of this survival strength and this hardness right this Mass that's what they say from the world standpoint this masculine energy but really it's this pride and this arrogant that you don't need anybody that you who you need is you that you are so this this this illusion that you are so all powerful that you actually think that you got it that you can do it all on your own I had to learn from God that that was a deep sense of pride and arrogance to even to be so caught up in the mindset that I can do it on my own or it has to be me that is pride that is arrogance and unfortunately we are conditioned in that many us our condition to be prideful to be rebellious to be all these things and we have to break that conditioning especially if you want to embrace living a softer life in Christ okay and I think this is big especially for you know a spot bace especially when you're in leadership positions when you're in positions where everybody needs you or you know you're the one that has to speak to be able to release that hardness and to be in trust and to not feel like you have to save everything to be able to easily delegate right to deal with the irritation the frustration the anger right the bitterness the resentment from people not valuing you appreciating you all these different things like God will help you align yourself in the right environment that properly nourishes you but if you don't have a hold on nourishing yourself you will constantly be around people that take take take take take take take and feel no remorse about not you know pouring into matter of fact they will begin to take to the point where it's almost disrespectful they don't even check themselves they don't even sit back and say you know what this woman has done a lot for me if she does nothing else I'm grateful they don't even check themselves like you know what this woman or my sister or my daughter or whomever my cousin my friend Etc she does a lot what does she need no they're like okay when's the next opportunity for me to take you know what I mean so they'll take to the point where it's almost disrespectful as if you are not human and you are just this vending machine that is just there to supply all their needs the devil is a liar okay the devil is a liar so it's important to get your Humanity back your sensitivity back in some cases your femininity back and in order to do that you're going to have to be willing to release release this strength and these survival mindsets that you're in so I'm excited about that I believe that in March while you know we're in that fast I'll do more episodes release more episodes that really help us with releasing that right um obviously if you feel like you need to do that now start that now go ahead and do that go click the link in the bio put the code freedom in and it'll give you 48% off on that so I always tell people if you feel like you're being called to fast or you're being called to work on this now you do not have to wait but sometimes that group support or knowing that you're doing that with a community that challenge with a community it helps you okay so I am very excited about that because if no one else if it's going to be their eser year I know it's going to be mine so I'm excited I'm already seeing how that's helping me and I'm looking forward to even more of what God is going to be doing in this season so if you feel like this episode resonate with you um or if there's any takeaways you have any you know notes whatever go ahead drop it down in the comment down below okay you know I love to hear you guys talk about just the different things that God is doing in your life and just how you know this episode has helped you or previous episode has helped you I think it's so beneficial you know to other people who are new here so I appreciate you guys be sure to like be sure to subscribe and be sure to join the community so I love you guys you guys have a wonderful day talk to you soon byebye