Do You Love…Yourself?

As I reflected on tonight’s topic, it seemed the logical answer would be “yes!” But, is it though? Or, did the question give you a certain amount of pause followed by some persuading of self to arrive at the right answer? What happens to a person that leads to not loving themself? What kind of circumstances gathered together and overpowered a person to the place where they could not even love their very own self? Logic alone would seem to dictate that you being the only you, you have, surely would lead to loving yourself or at minimum not actively opposing your own self. Yet, that is often not the case. Something or someone has caused people to be at odds with themselves. It’s not a natural conclusion to think otherwise. I think it is high time we explored what thoughts we are holding onto about ourselves that lead us into not having a basic self love and respect for ourselves. So again my friend, do you love yourself?

When I think of love I think of the warm feelings that always accompany it. When you love someone you are not always happy about how they act nor do you always agree with them. Yet in your heart you know you love them. You have a soft spot for them. In other words, you have a tenderness inside that isn’t always impacted by what they say or what they do. Soft hearts love effortlessly and easily. Yet, if you perceive the object of your love as always doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong words, your heart can become hard towards them eventually leading to a lack of love. Therein is a valuable piece of understanding. A hardened heart has a hard time loving anyone including themselves. Living in this world with all of its insanity, its selfishness, its utter disregard for people, it is easy to become hard hearted. The world seeks to harden your heart. The way it hardens your heart is by the bad things that happen to you. People don’t harden their hearts because they want to, they harden their hearts in an attempt at self preservation. If you treat a part of your body roughly, it will eventually develop a callous to protect it. A callous heart is one that has been treated roughly by the world and in a vain attempt to preserve it, hardens it more and more. However, the problem with a hard heart is that it is no longer sensitive to all of the pleasant sensations that accompany love. In a sense it cannot feel properly anymore. By the time a person reaches the woeful place where they do not love their own selves anymore, their heart has definitely been hardened. Do you not love yourself anymore? Maybe your heart has been hardened.

In your mind you think many thoughts throughout a day. If you are not careful with your thoughts they will become more and more negative and more and more critical. People, myself included at times, think awful things about themselves. They live in a perpetual state of opposition with themselves. They don’t like how they look or how they talk or what they have accomplished in their lives or what mistakes they have made and are still making. Yet love for yourself cannot be based on that criteria. Can you imagine not loving your friend because he doesn’t make enough money or got a little heavy or because, God forbid, he makes mistakes? If you can so easily spot the humanity of other people, what makes it so hard to spot it in yourself? We are all imperfect creatures and have our own well developed sets of flaws. All of us. The person you envy in one category of life has his own demons with which he must contend. The person who seems to have it all never has it all and would likely be the first one to tell you that. I think often the reason people do not love themselves anymore is because they are just too damn hard on themselves. They carry around this inflated impossible standard of behavior they cannot ever reach. The harder they endeavor to “get better” the worse they actually become. They treat themselves with harshness and run roughshod on their own hearts. And in response, natural response, their hearts get hard. Real love is full of forgiveness and mercy. True love “sees more, but is willing to see less.” Love doesn’t have conditions placed upon it or else it is not love. God loves us unconditionally because love has to be unconditional. Can you imagine withdrawing love from your son or your daughter because their behaviors do not line up with your expectations? Or worse because they gained some weight or failed at something? Parents love their children because they are their children. We should love ourselves because we are ourselves.

Loving yourself is a decision you must make. Those negative conclusions you have developed about yourself are not benign. They do not originate with you. They come from outside of you. No person could hate themselves on their own. Instead they have grown accustomed to that inner voice that insists on perpetual reproach and faultfinding towards themselves. And to what purpose do those habitually errant thoughts serve? None of us get better in an environment of endless criticism. You cannot criticize a person into doing better. People do better when they are loved and accepted. People do better when you give them a break, a pass, a kindness and a decision to love them anyway. It is the goodness of God that leads us to a change of heart, not criticism. Endless criticism and evaluation of self lead only to the wrong conclusion, namely, “I am not worthy.” Yet, at the end of the day, who is worthy? There is none good but God as the scripture aptly explains. That voice you have been listening to is not from God. Self hatred is not inspired by God. Instead it is the voice of evil working in your own mind to make you less than who God says you actually are. By the time you get to the place where you no longer love your own self, you have listened too long to the wrong source. You stopped paying attention and a callous has formed around your heart. God wants us to have a tender heart. One that feels and is sensitive to things. God loves us into loving our own selves again.

If I could offer one thing to those poor souls suffering from self-hatred it is this. Love yourself once again. Give yourself a break. Stop adding up and calculating all that is not good about you. Quit focusing on your flaws and the places you struggle. Have you ever met those blessed souls who just own who they are both the good and the bad? Those folks who refuse to dwell on their imperfections? God’s great plan of redemption includes the offering of His beloved son, the perfect for the imperfect. He gave us His son to set us free from ourselves. He already knew we could never measure up on our own and as such forever ended our need to try. Jesus Christ paid the price for everything that was ever wrong with you and me. Everything! We live not by our own works, but by the works of another man. Don’t you see it? We can, on our own, never reach that place we have been trying so hard to get to. It is impossible by the sin nature that lives in our bloodlines. So Papa made a way out for us. And because of that tremendous sacrifice of love, we never have to feel bad about ourselves again. We can finally embrace who God made us to be and quit insisting on trying to do it on our own! Living in perpetual hatred towards ourselves is a lie and one which we must rid of ourselves of completely. Oh my goodness, be you and do you. Offer yourself the same unconditional love that God offers you. God will help your heart to become tender again by His unconditional love for you. Accept it. Embrace it. Live in it.

Loving yourself is a decision you must make. It is not based upon conditions, it is a decision. Decide today that you are wonderful just as you are. Let go of all “what is wrong with me” thoughts and embrace the uniqueness of who you are. Stop evaluating and judging yourself. You are imperfect but your imperfections do not define who you are. You are worthy of love and you are not wrong for deciding to love yourself. Do you love…yourself? I sure hope so. God does!

Just some good thoughts.