Love Yourself

Love yourself for you.

Love yourself and then you will be empowered.

Love yourself and then you will be beautiful.

Love yourself and then other people will love you.

Love yourself and then you will be happy.

 

Does this sound familiar?  It should.  I know I've heard it from various sources for the majority of my life.  To some extent, the feel-good-gurus are right.  We do need to love ourselves, but not for the reasons that they usually give.

 

You and I, my dear readers, are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Made on purpose - no accidents here - with gifts and talents and beauty that is all our own.  This is why we should love ourselves.

Loving yourself shouldn't be something you have to make yourself do.  You should really love yourself - without effort.  If you find it difficult or you have to work at it, maybe you should take a good look inward and find out why.

Perhaps you struggle against a history of abuse: terrible things that were done or said to you to purposely make you feel like you have no value.  Perhaps it is because there is something about yourself that you truly dislike.  If you are the first, I am deeply sorry for what was done to you.  There are a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to helping people just like you, and, if you haven't already, I urge you to seek one of them out.  Talk to a counselor and let them help you.  A highly trusted resource of mine recommends www.purelyhisministry.com (thanks, girl!).

The majority of this post, however, will focus on the second type - mostly because I am limited to my own experience and this is the category I fell into.

Take a good long look inward.  What do you love about yourself?  What do you find that you struggle to love about yourself?  Here's the great news: You have the power to change the things you don't love about you.  (I'm not endorsing major and unhealthy plastic surgery here.  Let's be reasonable.)

Do you find that you have to make yourself say, "I love my body," and even then, you can tell that you are lying?  It's YOUR body.  You only get the one.  No replacements.  I'm not going to pat you on the hand and tell you it's okay to be obese.  Love your body!  It was made specifically for you by a loving God.  Don't you think you should love it enough to take care of it?  Go to your doctor first - tell him/her you'd like some help losing/gaining/maintaining weight.  Ask them what a healthy goal would be for you.  Please accept your doctor's advice - whether they tell you to lose some weight or gain some.  The benefits, bot psychologically and neurologically, of maintaining a healthy body weight are too numerous to list here.  I'm serious.  Look it up.  I will be the first to acknowledge that losing weight is hard.  If you love yourself, you'll do it.  Don't eat four cheeseburgers for dinner and then complain that you can't lose weight no matter how hard you try.  Get out there and do it.

You should love all aspects of yourself.  Don't like how messy of a person you are?  Get into a cleaning routine.  Keep yourself organized.  It will be hard.  It will be frustrating and maybe even discouraging at times.  You can build good habits into yourself just as easily as you can build bad habits.  The bad habits are usually just a bit more fun than the good ones.

Don't like how you do with money and budgets?  I have a hard time saying "no" to the temporary joy of a new pair of shoes in favor of the more satisfying - if less stunningly gorgeous - joy of knowing all my bills got paid this month.  There's help for that.  You can take a class - I recommend Dave Ramsey.  You can also talk to your bank or credit union; they usually have someone on staff who can help you.  Get a "Budgets for Dummies" book and get into a routine.  Maybe even talk to a close friend about doing some accountability.  I know how hard it is to walk away from a beautiful pair of shoes on sale.  But it's a lot easier when I can call a friend who will remind me that I don't NEED those shoes.

Don't like your job?  Brush up your resume.  See what else is out there.  See what kinds of furthering education steps you'll need to take to get the job you want.  You might find something that you love, or you may discover that you like your current job better than you thought.

Wish that you could sing better?  Dance better?  Speak another language?  Play piano?  Throw pottery on a wheel?  It is never too late to learn a new skill or just to have fun taking a community class.  You may be surprised by the self-confidence new skills can build into you.

Feeling overwhelmed yet?  Don't be.  You don't have to completely remake yourself all at once, overnight.  Life is an ongoing process.  Just pick one thing that YOU want to change for yourself and start there.  It will become a part of you before you know it.  Everyone is different - your struggles aren't going to be the same as mine here.  And these aren't even all the issues I fight against!

Don't force yourself to say that you love something about yourself that you really don't.  Don't try to accept things just because someone out there said that "we have to love ourselves just the way we are."  Take the stewardship of your body and mind and soul seriously.  Love yourself because you really love who you are and what you are doing with your life!

"Love your neighbor as you love yourself" is repeated 8 times in the Bible.  When we can freely love ourselves, it empowers us to love others around us.  Through our love, they meet the love of the Father and the lovely things about themselves they may have forgotten.



Best Intentions

Isn't there a road somewhere paved with those?

 

Has this ever happened to you?  You are at a gathering - church, a party, a social hangout of some kind - and a friend of yours walks up with a guy in tow.  The conversation goes something along the lines of "Hi Mary, this is Joe.  Joe, this is Mary.  I think you two would be perfect together."  And you find yourself hoping, praying, that God would crack the earth open under your feet and let you fall into the abyss just so you could get out of the situation.

 

All of us singles have those friends who mean well, but somehow end up either publicly embarrassing us or leaving us in delightfully awkward situations fraught with the opportunity to embarrass ourselves.  These situations usually come in some form of "setup."

 

The setup is one of those terrifying, inevitable situations that all singles dread, but kind of want.  It's like going to the dentist: you know it's going to happen sooner or later, it can either go really great or horribly wrong, and when you're in the middle of it, you're mostly holding your breath and hoping to just make it through.

 

My dear fellow singles, don't get too annoyed with your friends for constantly trying to set you up with people.  It means that they think you are an amazing person who deserves all the happiness the world can bring.  It's flattering.  Really.

 

My darling married readers, BE CAREFUL!!  Remember that these are your friends, and hopefully you want them to continue speaking to you in the future.  There is a right way and a wrong way to go about setting up your single friends.  The worst form is the flippant setup which is based on surface facts that you know both parties share.  It often sounds like this: "I know someone about your age who also drinks coffee and breathes air - you two would be perfect together."  While flattering to the single who can appreciate that you just want them to be happy, it can give the impression that you either don't know them well, or don't care enough to do your research and make a proper setup.

 

The good news is, the right way to setup your single friends isn't hard to learn.  I've compiled some basic rules for all you would-be-matchmakers.  These are by no means exhaustive rules.  They're more like guidelines, actually.  They come from nothing more reliable than my own meandering experience. 

 

You must know both parties well.

So well that it would not be unusual for you to invite them over for dinner.  Having met them briefly at a conference where you exchanged business cards does NOT count.  Having gone to school with them over a decade ago - but not spoken to them since - also does NOT count.

 

Neither party can know that it is a setup.

It eliminates all chances for a natural spark.

 

The initial setup MUST be a casual group setting.

Bowling or a party are great setup opportunities.  A double date with you and your spouse does NOT count.  The singles will smell a setup as fast as they can count to four, which is pretty quick unless they went to UW.  In which case, you might even get halfway through the evening before they suspect.

 

Give your singles a tactful escape route in case they want it.

Introductions as unpleasant as the one I mentioned above are an almost sure fire way to guarantee some sort of personal retaliation from your friends.

But maybe that was your plan?  Maybe you were hoping that they would bond through the shared experience of planning your doom.  How very thoughtful of you!


This is not an exclusive set of rules.  I'm sure there are more that will be added to the list.  But if you stick with these, you might one day be a successful matchmaker.

To my lovely singles out there, remember that every time someone tries or succeeds in setting you up, they are saying, "You're amazing and we're not giving up on you!"



The Dreaded Question

"Why are you still single?"

If you're like me, your mind is a total blank when you're asked this question.  But hours later when you're lying in bed or brushing your teeth, you can think of thousands of things you should've said:

"Probably because I never forwarded any of those chain messages in high school."

Become Bridget Jones and say, "because underneath my clothes I'm completely covered in scales."

"Because I'm socially awkward."  If you feel up to the challenge, subtly move into their personal space, avoiding eye contact, and ask if they'd like to see some proofs for your last photo shoot for your cats.

"Gravity is the only thing attracted to me."

Go Shakespearean, "Not until God makes man from some other metal than earth."

Look confused.  Say, "I am dating someone."  Motion affectionately to the air beside you.  For extra effect, make introductions, even strike up a conversation with "air-boyfriend", apologizing that the other person pretended he wasn't even there.

It is unclear why people feel the need to ask this question of singles.  Perhaps they think they are paying you a compliment by expressing their disbelief that such a witty and beautiful person has not been snatched up yet.  Or maybe they are attempting to make polite conversation, but are so accustomed to talking to other married people, they've completely forgotten what singles talk about.

For whatever reason, the question still gets asked.  A lot.

To my dear married readers:

Have mercy.

I would caution you to steer clear of any form of this question.  It's not the compliment you think it is.    You ask, "why are you still single?"  She hears, "why doesn't anyone love you?"  Vastly different than you had intended, I know.

When you think of it that way, you will understand the awkward silence and non-committal shrug response most singles favor.  Your single friend might even force a smile.  But then she will go home and cry into the chocolate ice cream she is eating straight from the carton with a fork because all the spoons are dirty.  I think there is a universal law involving the unavailability of spoons when there is a desperate emotional need for them.

If you want to know about your single friend's love life, wait.  She will bring it up, usually at the earliest opportunity.  If she isn't bringing it up, either there is nothing new, or you need to earn more trust before she feels like she can share with you.

To my dear singles:

Forgive them.

Your married friends who ask you this question aren't actually - as my dear friend, Grace, likes to call them, "idiots who deserve to be smeared with bear poop."  They are people who care a great deal about what is going on in your life.  They just don't always know how to ask you about it.  So please, don't walk away hurt or resort to emotional eating.

Don't allow a friend expressing their hope and excitement for all the possibilities in your future to overshadow the joy of the present.  Knowing that you are surrounded by loving friends, both married and single, is one of the best things in life.

There are good things ahead of you!  Don't worry, I'm not going to quote Jeremiah 29:11 at you.  But I will ask you to take the question "Why are you still single?" as the compliment it is meant to be.  Let your smile be genuine.  Value your married friends.  And don't eat ice cream with a fork.  Wash a spoon.