Hey girls… Let’s talk.
This has been in my heart for quite some time. I’ve written it and rewritten it. It was hard. I didn’t want to share or reflect on my own hurts, habits, and hang-ups. The bottom line is, I was having trouble being vulnerable.
Why?
Because I have a certain standard to uphold. My life is a reflection of my relationship with Jesus, right?
Wrong.
Most days, I’m a mess, and that’s okay. If anything, my dysfunction is a reflection of how much I need Jesus.
So my point is… lately, I’ve been struggling with the different post on social media about self-love.
And I get it. I understand. I’ve lived it.
It is exhausting to feel inadequate. It is mentally and physically exhausting, and it is so much easier to fight the feelings of inadequacy by chasing “self-love.” It’s so much easier to put your energy into convincing yourself that you’re independent and awesome and “perfect just the way you are.”
But here’s the catch… do we ever really succeed in “loving ourselves?”
Personally, my love is conditional, dependent on the moment or season of life.
Most mornings, I wake up and immediately step on the scale, and there are days that I can’t focus until I run off the ice cream I ate the night before. My schedule is often built around my gym time, and there are too many nights I have canceled plans because I placed more importance on my workout than the people who love me. I often stand in the mirror and body shame myself, picking out every flaw of grand design.
I spend a lot of time alone. Alone time means I don’t have to quiet thoughts of “People will think...” “Do they notice my...” or “When I leave, they’ll talk about…”
If I’m being honest… The past five years have been an ongoing cycle of failed attempts to “love myself.” Failed attempts. Why? Because I’m human. I’m flesh. I do not have the capacity to love myself unconditionally.
One day, I realized something. I had spent years telling God that I could love myself better than He could.
I placed my validity, my worth, my happiness, my everything into my ability to “love myself,” and I wasn’t very good at it. I had a skewed perception; I had somehow started measuring myself by the world’s definition of worth. You see, Satan is strategic. Every internal battle you face possesses a personality, an intimate knowledge of who you are. He knows the precise pressure points where you can most easily be taken down. And we, as humans, act with our emotions. Emotions are fickle; they’re Satan’s bait.
My conditional love is affected by my emotional state, and Satan’s favorite past time is ensuring instability in our emotions.
I had been trying so hard to “love myself” when my Creator already covers me fully in an unfailing, prevailing, constant, never ending, grace filled love. And here’s the best part… “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” [1 Samuel 16:7]
HOW FREEING IS THAT, GIRLS?
Ladies… We’re trying to love ourselves through the eyes of the world, and this world is everything that God is not. We are hurting ourselves by encouraging one another to fall into “self love” instead of falling deeper in love with Jesus, the one person who already loves our brokenness. Not only are we telling God that we can love ourselves better, but we are empowering Satan to creep into our lives and manipulate our perception of worth.
In fact, Jesus even tells us to deny ourselves.
He’s not asking you to put on a potato sack and throw away the lipstick.
He’s simply asking that you find your identity in Him. Because until we stop searching for false validity from the world, we are inhibiting ourselves from fully experiencing the freedom of our righteous worth.
In Romans 12: 1-2, Paul writes, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
God’s love isn’t fickle. It doesn’t change during late night binges or embarrassing mishaps. It doesn’t falter when we’re unable to suppress our minds from reliving our deepest moments of shame. And he certainly loves us through moments of heartbreak when a boy decides that we are not enough. Because God’s love is so much bigger, so much stronger, so much better than we can even comprehend. God’s love is transparent.
So ladies… I understand that being a girl is tough. Jesus was always compassionate, but he always spoke the truth. Our next move is simple but intentional… let’s stop placing such an emphasis on “self love.” Instead of allowing the world to shape us from the outside-in, let’s give Jesus the chance to shape us from the inside-out.
