Why Can’t I Love Myself? || Thought Provokers || Part 1

I am wrapping up tax season and am behind schedule. Instead of our regularly scheduled Manna for the Minds, enjoy an old youth series I created: “Thought Provokers”

Today’s thought provoker is about acceptance. We’re going to look at the question: “What is difficult about loving me?” First, we need to talk about what it means to be accepted. The definition we will use for acceptance is: “the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable.” To feel accepted, we must find an agreeance between who we are and who God has called us to be. The world’s version of acceptance seems to change quickly depending on who you ask and what platform you’re on.

One of the toughest things to do in life is learning how to love yourself. Figuring out what that means can be even harder. We are overwhelmed with the positive imagery and mentalities about self-care that we don’t know how to apply in our lives. We don’t know where to start or what to try, and then we get overwhelmed and think that it will be impossible to love ourselves. The Bible talks about how we can love ourselves. Let’s dive into it.

Colossians 3:12 says: “God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So always do these things: show mercy to others, be kind, humble, gentle, and patient.”

Some of you may ask how this about loving ourselves when this talks about how we should treat each other. Remember Jesus second command: “love others as you would love yourself.” This means that these things apply to you. If you have a hard time loving yourself, how much harder is it to love others genuinely? With all the hang-ups and hurts we may have, we can still love ourselves with compassion, kindness, humbleness, gentleness, and patience. All of these are fruits of the spirit, which are gifts given to us from the Holy Spirit. These are things that we have already, we just have a hard time figuring out how to use them for ourselves because we’re always taught to take care of each other. These traits are what we’re going to talk about today.

Compassion

Compassion is “an emotional, caring relationship with those whose lives are hurt and broken.” How many of you have felt damaged or broken or know someone who is damaged and broken? How many of you would show compassion to them? If you answered yes to that last question, then why aren’t you showing that same compassion to yourself. Most times, it’s because we don’t want to deal with our emotions stemming from the hurts. It can make us uncomfortable, and we don’t like to sit in uncomfortableness. We need to though if we want to heal. A mental wound is still a wound, and it needs to be treated as a physical wound would. This requires an emotional and caring process. The time necessary to acknowledge the hurt and brokenness: “Yeah, this hurts.” The care needed to overcome the pain and brokenness. “Yup. This is not who I am. This feeling is temporary.” This isn’t an overnight process to learn compassion, but it’s good to start during your life journey.

Kindness

Kindness is “the readiness to do good, even when it may be undeserved.” We’ve felt those times where we thought no one will love or accept us. Yet, we all have access to love and acceptance through Christ. God loves us no matter how we feel about ourselves. God loves us during those times when we feel unloved or undeserving of love from anyone or anything. This same kindness is for us – the readiness to be good to ourselves even when we don’t want to. Maybe it’s keeping some words of affirmation nearby so we can remind ourselves of something positive. Maybe it’s establishing a routine that we can go to when we’re feeling this way. Maybe it’s friends that we could talk to that will help cheer us up and encourage us. Instead of sitting in this feeling of not being loved, we remember the compassion God teaches us to use and regain the energy and motivation to embrace that kindness. Remember that your feelings are temporary, but God’s love lasts forever.

Humility

Humility is “recognizing our limits and God’s strength.” Humility, or humbleness, teaches us that not everything is about is. It’s also defined as a modest or low view of one’s own importance. It teaches us to put ourselves low on the totem pole because when it gets out of hand, it turns to arrogance. Many Christians are taught to put Jesus first, others second, and then ourselves third. It has taught us to love God and love others, but it doesn’t add in the part about loving yourself. This view of humility that I want to focus on is acknowledging the hurt you’ve bottled up for so long. To take those hurts before God and give them to Him. By doing this, you’re admitting that you can’t fight this battle yourself. You need God’s help, guidance, and wisdom, to get through season of feeling unloved and unaccepted. Great news though! God’s listens all the time! God’s love and grace is with you at all times, but you need to slide over into the passenger seat and let God drive. You will need to work together, which in this culture of independence, may be hard. It’s still doable!

Gentleness

Gentleness is “an offering to help in a non-coercive (forceful) approach to encouraging change in others’ lives.” Be gentle with yourself in this season. These tough seasons bring feelings of hyperawareness and hypersensitivity. With that, you don’t want to have yourself or others force things upon you. People may try to help, but they may be too forceful or aggressive to you for what you need. Again, be gentle with handling how you feel right now. You might be ready to move on and feel normal again. I encourage you though, feel comfortable in the uncomfortable. I want you to allow yourself to feel the feelings you have. I want you to gently embrace the sensations that you are going through your body and mind. When you feel comfortable in those sensations, try to progress deeper. The goal should be to find the source of why you feel what you feel. Once the source is identified, then it’s time to recover. It could be with the help of therapy, a friend, praying to God, or some combination of that. In recovery, pursue the gentle route too. I mentioned earlier that we can get overwhelmed with self-care routines that may or may not work for us. I just want to remind you to be gentle with yourself in find what works for you; it may take several tries.

Patience

Patience is “the willingness to take the long view in the face of human frailty.” The desire to take as much time as needed for people who are broken. It takes time to heal. Healing will not be an overnight journey for most people, but instead a long-term tip that will have many ups and downs and a brighter light at the end of the tunnel. Patience is hard to learn. I’ve often been told to not pray for patience because God will answer that by blessing us with situations that can make us patient. Patience takes time, and sadly, not on our timeline. God doesn’t work when we ask him to, but when He believe the time right. Be patient with yourself in your journey of self-love and self-acceptance.

Bottom Line

Compassion is something we give to others, but rarely to ourselves. God grants us with compassion every day. We can learn this compassion and embrace ourselves in it even when we don’t want too. Kindness is something we give to others dealing with their own trauma, yet we can be hard on ourselves for dealing with it. God walks with us on our journey every day. He still loves and forgives us when we miss the mark. If God does that for us, why can’t we embrace that? Humility reminds us that it’s not all about us and grants us the ability to tell God: “I can’t do this on my own. I need your help.” Gentleness is something that we are others because we attempt to meet people where they are. We don’t do that ourselves. God’s love lets us navigate the discomfort to get us out of the tough seasons in a loving and gentle way. Patience is something we offer people. We know they need their time to process what they’re dealing with but are angry at ourselves because we’re not over it in a day. God grants us patience to dissect and process what we’re dealing with at its core and then process the healing journey He’ll put us through. We practice these virtues towards ourselves because we are God’s reflective image, and God treats His image-bearers with mercy, not contempt.

Next part: The World’s Hardest Task || Thought Provokers || Part 2