1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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Love yourself. It doesn’t mean being conceited or thinking that you are better than anyone else. It is about accepting who you are. It is being grateful for the good things and the bad.
I have a friend who’s a single parent. At age of 19 she got pregnant with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, he’s not ready yet to be a father, so she raised her daughter on her own. She dated again and have been to several failed relationships. Until she met “the one” she thought would be the man to complete her life. They lived together and blessed with a baby. Everything seems perfect. They were living happily and planning about their future as happy family, one of which was working abroad.
She left her children with him for overseas opportunities; it was not easy, but she loved her family too much that she had to go. Few weeks later, they were fighting over the phone; until it goes over and over again.
She felt helpless and discouraged.
She felt like all the sacrifices she had done nothing.
She was frustrated because she assumed that after all the sacrifices she had done, she should have been appreciated. And she started to blame herself — she should have a high standard in choosing the man. She should have had a better job. She should have earned more money. She should have been happier and so on.
A few years later, she was even more frustrated in the new job back home— and still single after dozens of failed dates with men who didn’t even remotely fit the description of her dream man. Until she had a moment of realisation when her daughter told her how much she love her.
In that moment, she realised how unloving she was toward herself. She finally realised that throughout her entire life, she had been betraying her past and abandoning herself.
Until you love yourself, you will not be able to love anyone else. You can only love another to the degree that you do yourself simply because you cannot give what you do not have. Loving yourself is the first step toward happy relationships.
One of the advantages of loving yourself is that nobody can hurt you.
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If you love yourself, nobody can hurt you — because you understand that you are human, you are not perfect, but God wonderfully makes you on purpose. You have your own flaws and weaknesses. And that’s okay. You acknowledge that you have the potential and spiritual capability to rise above whatever conditions and obstacles are put in your path.
When you love yourself, you invest in your personal growth and development. You endeavour to be the best that you can be, and you strive to achieve your potential.
And last but not the least — you know your “worth” as uniquely YOU. Because you are focused on the awesome love that God has for you.
“Now I know that my old ways of avoiding and distracting myself from the pain never worked—that I had to go through it to go beyond it, and that going beyond it does not mean I will never feel sad or despairing again. I will, but I have put my trust in the Lord, knowing I will be okay, because I now understand that all of me is lovable, and I am precisely enough as I am right now”, she said.
Do you love yourself? Do you know how greatly God loves you?
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