Love Yourself

Loving yourself is not terribly British.  Blowing one's own trumpet or singing one's praises seems unnecessary.

 

We Brits are far more likely to talk ourselves down, to feign 'humility' or 'modesty' by saying that we're not all that good at something actually, or we must have just got lucky.

 

We don't really celebrate ourselves (at least, not out loud for other people to hear us - for fear of seeming arrogant and conceited), and we don't really know how to love ourselves.

 

But until we can love and accept ourselves, we will never be able to truly love others.

 

You can't give something you haven't got.

 

There is an assumption throughout the Bible that we will love ourselves.  And love ourselves well.  In fact, Jesus said that the second most important command was for us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves [Matthew 22:39].

 

Loving ourselves is important.  It is fundamental.  Brene Brown writes,

 

"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do."

 

And as Carrie Bradshaw says in Sex and the City -

"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all, is the one you have with yourself."

 

I love this passage in Ephesians about love -

"Mostly what God does is love you.  Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us.  His love was not cautious but extravagant.  He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us.  Love like that."
 

[Ephesians 5:2 MSG]

We can only love like that - giving everything of ourselves to others without trying to get something back - when we are secure in ourselves and when we have accepted God's love for us and have begun to love ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Because You're Worth It

I've started reading a really interesting book today called 'The Gifts of Imperfection' by Brene Brown. 

 

As someone who constantly battles with perfectionism, the idea that imperfection could be okay, let alone a gift, is quite a difficult one for me to swallow.  However, the first section that I've been reading has been really interesting.

 

In one of the early chapters, she describes the concept of worthiness - feeling worthy, or good enough, for love and belonging -

 

"The biggest challenge for most of us is believing that we are worthy now, right this minute.  Worthiness doesn't have prerequisites.  So many of us have knowingly created/unknowingly allowed/been handed down a long list of worthiness prerequisites [she continues to list the 'prerequisites we conjure up to become 'worthy' of love and belonging] ... We are worthy of love and belonging now.  Right this minute.  As is."

 

I love how this concept of worthy right now is seen in Jesus and beautifully displayed through His ministry.  Jesus reached out and touched the blind, the 'unclean', the rejected.  He touched the outsiders of society and called them worthy.  And in declaring them worthy, they became worthy.

 

It is the same with us.

 

He reaches out to us and embraces us, no matter where we find ourselves, or what we have done or thought or believed.  And He declares us worthy.  Because of His great love, manifested in His death for us on the cross.

 

"Immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.  He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ [...] Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah."

 

[Ephesians 2:4, 6 MSG] 

 

We can't earn God's love.  But we don't need to.

 

We are worthy because He says we are.