Loving Yourself
Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Growing up I heard this as “Love God, love others,” and I’ve even seen churches that use that as their slogan.
Heck, I’ve used that slogan in ministry groups.
But we tend to ignore the part that comes after the word “neighbor.”
When Jesus said this statement, I don’t think He meant for us to ignore that last part. He did everything purposefully, and usually to teach a lesson. He didn’t waste or throwaway words.
We need to love our neighbors in the way we love ourselves, so for years now I’ve been asking the question how do we love ourselves?
Loving ourselves can mean to affirm ourselves, speak kindly to ourselves, but I think it’s more simple than that.
I think loving ourselves means to take care of ourselves.
The last few months I’ve been using a fitness band that tracks, specifically, how much I strain myself day-to-day and how well I rest and “recover.”
It’s shown me some pretty gaping holes in what I do every day that keeps me from resting well. It’s helped me to realize that I haven’t been taking care of myself as well as I should be, and as a result, I haven’t been loving myself well.
When I rest well, my mental health is better, my physical health gets better, I’m able to focus better, and I’m able to love those around me better.
Resting is biblical, too. Jesus regularly went away and rested—ensuring that He was prepared to love those around Him well.
When Elijah was engulfed in his depression and wanting to die, God sends him to the dessert to sleep, then he’s woken up by an angel, given food, and told to sleep some more because he needs to go on a journey to show off his love for God.
When we love ourselves well, we understand how to love those around us, and we are able to love God well.
If we want to follow Christ’s command to love God and love others, loving ourselves is a key component for us to understand and strive for.
Loving ourselves, and taking care of ourselves, is the first step, it is the foundation for the love we are supposed to show the world.
It’s not easy, but it’s so, so worth the process and pain.
So the question we need to ask ourselves is are we loving ourselves well? Are we listening to our bodies and giving them the rest they need to literally carry us through the day? Are we starving ourselves—from food, from attention, from intellectual stimulation, from anything—every day, or do we feed ourselves—spiritually, physically, mentally?
What steps are we taking to love ourselves so well that the world around us must know how we are able to love others so well? What steps are we taking to be so good to ourselves that we glorify God in the process?
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