day 29: six loving yourself secrets

This time last year things started to unravel.

I was beginning to unravel. See the post I wrote exactly one year ago today. {How good is God that He knows the timing of all things!}

It's what happens when you forget to love yourself or give yourself permission to love yourself. Because when you grow up believing you are a selfish person, then loving yourself just feels like one more way you are taking more than your share.

And living in a first world country where you've never been hungry, always been clothed, always had access to safe water, shelter and medical care, had parents who paid for your college education, have taken vacations to "get away from it all" and can more or less buy what you want and not just what you need to survive...

Well...asking for anything more just seems to feed that selfish cycle.

Becoming a follower of Christ only increased my guilt because, suddenly, I actually cared that other people were starving, impoverished, uneducated and unable to get away from it all. It's much easier living without the knowledge that what you believe and what you do on this earth actually have eternal ramifications.

The only way I could imagine fighting selfish desires was to be hard on myself.

So I hesitated to ask for help and denied that I needed time for myself. And I looked for ways to do less for myself and more for others. And I pushed and pushed myself to meet the expectations I set.

Thank God He let wall come a-tumbling down just before Christmas.

Almost one year later, I think I might be learning how to love myself one small step at a time. Here are six ways I'm learning to walk in that freedom:

Six Loving Yourself Secrets:

• Walk with God. 
• Cling to Him. 
• Ask Him to help you know Him to the exclusion of all else. 
• Remember He is kind. 
• Remember He loves. 
• Remember He forgives when you seek His forgiveness and so you must forgive yourself.
  

Do you have a hard time loving yourself too? How might you love others better if you loved yourself the way God loves you?

Sharing these secrets and these gifts with Ann @ A Holy Experience:
#1000...seeing God in a 1000 beautiful ways
1001...learning to love myself the way God loves me
1002...that 31 days of writing are almost over
1003...a shelter from the storm
1004...quaking in my boots because I know I need God to get me through
1005...closing in on a new church home (please, please)