Dec 9th 2009 (1 year, 27 days)

I didn't write this post this time last year, but December is way too far away and I felt like re-posting this today. It's something I wrote at a time when myself, and a number of girls I knew were struggling with this:

I was talking with a friend last night. And God just got a hold of me and when I got home I started to write. I believe this is truth we all need to hear.

Amongst other things, I’m totally beginning to understand the importance of learning to love myself before I love others. Before I can love another.
My love for God, and desire to know Him more leads me to a place of knowing and finding out just how much He loves me and what that even looks like. I’m stunned by just how much he loves me. And even more so when I realise that He loved me first.
That any thing I do comes out of a response from the fact that He has loved me. He does love me. He will love me.

And it’s hard to love me. Seriously. I know me. I think I know me. And I find me hard to love.
My weight, my skin, my moods, my idiosyncrasies, my thoughts. There are things we all dislike about ourselves sometimes, right?

Sometimes I’m convinced that if other people knew the real me they wouldn’t love me.

But God knows the real me. Better than I do! He made me. Knit me together. Yes, knit me together – what a cliché. But when I think about what that looks like; it’s amazing. Imagine it. He weaved each thread of DNA together in such a way to form this functioning being, this human, this girl that never has been and never will be created ever again. He made me. And you.

And God is a perfectionist.
He’s God! He doesn’t make mistakes.
I have been carefully handcrafted by the most talented artist, sculpture, composer… I am His. He knows me and wants me to know Him. How could I doubt that He loves me?

Well, I’m flawed. Through human-error, not God-error.
And I forget that my worth comes from God – The Almighty, The Creator - and when I start to look for worth in what the world values (looks, nice clothes, guys, sex), that’s where Satan finds his way in and causes me to doubt God’s love for me.
I can hear the deceiver taunt me and begin to stir, as the beautiful girls walk past, when it doesn’t work out with the guy I like, when I crack a joke and no one laughs, when I’m disappointed with what I see in the mirror because I’m 20lbs heavier than I’d like to be…
If I’m not beautiful or funny or talented then I’m not loved. If I’m not making the standard, if the guys don’t like me, if I can’t lose weight - it’s my fault, I just need to try harder, right?

Wrong.

There could never be a more beautiful me. I find it hard to believe it even as I type it out. But I will keep speaking & singing it over myself because I know it’s true, I know I need to hear it. I know that for me, learning to love myself, means learning to accept that I’m already beautiful..

Say it out loud to yourself. Don’t feel stupid. I think you probably need to hear it too.
You are beautiful.

I know that when God made me, when He made you, He had a plan. He didn’t mess up.
And He’s not gonna make me lose weight, or make the guys fall for me, or make sex outside of marriage ‘ok’, just to show me how much he loves me. That’s not love. That’s conforming to the pattern of this world and being sucked in to the distortion that we think love is.
No. Love is wanting the best for me, doing all that can be done to secure a hope and a future for me, helping me to realise my beauty and value and potential.
God loves me. Period.
God loves you. Period.
He wants the best for you, He has secured you a hope and future.
He’s patient and waits with us, cries with us, talks with us, and will continue to do so until our perspective changes. Of ourselves. Of real beauty. Of love.

We are commanded firstly to love God and secondly, to love our neighbour as our self.
As our self. If I don’t love myself, how can I love my neighbour?

I do my best to love my friends and family. To be patient and kind, to not be jealous and proud or self-seeking or count up wrongs etc.
I want to love other people like Jesus has loved me.
I want to love my enemies.
And one day I want to get married and have kids and build my life on and centred around Christ, together with the man I will love.

But honestly, I don’t know how I can try to love any one else, in the way Christ has loved me – without first learning to accept and love myself. As Christ has loved me. I know I can’t properly view other people in the way God does, if I don’t first view myself in the way God does.

Loving myself doesn’t mean being selfish, or self-seeking, or vain or proud. It doesn’t even mean putting myself above others.
But it does mean looking out for and after myself. Accepting that I was made by a divine creator and treating myself with dignity and respect. The way God treats me. After all, I am His.
Loving myself means eating right, and exercising enough. Choosing to not constantly feed my mind the junk that’s on the radio and the fake images of ‘perfection’ in the magazines. Choosing to walk in the way God has for me, trusting that He knows best.

And it means looking for my beauty. My quiet and gentle Spirit that is precious in the sight of God. The me that was so delicately created for a purpose and to reflect God’s beauty and design.
And this requires me to search through all the crap that I’ve collected along the way and begun to call me. And then to let God refine me.
And carry on letting Him do this even though it freakin’ hurts and exposes wounds and hurtful words I’ve carried around as part of my identity.
Letting Him purify me, like gold. And wipe away the rubbish that doesn’t belong.
And letting Him keep doing this for the rest of my life.
Not making me more beautiful. But exposing my beauty. The beauty I already have.
When you find gold, it’s already there, it’s just hidden away. It needs to be purified. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, or if it’s scientifically correct or whatever - but you get me right? Upon extreme heating, it doesn’t become gold - the gold already exists, it’s just becomes pure!

Girl, I know sometimes it’s hard to love yourself. To even know what it means to love yourself. And to be satisfied and content with who you are.
I’m right there with you.

But I know, that if we could even just grasp a tiny part of the reality of what it means TO BE LOVED BY GOD, we wouldn’t be worried about all this stuff and we would know that He already created us beautiful, that He loves us. Oh how He loves us.

We sing that over and over and over again in the song, but we still don’t seem to get it.

If nothing else today, just tell yourself how beautiful you are and how much you are loved by the one who created you and cares for you. And then go from there.

I love you in the way I know how,
Take care beautiful girl x

If you get a chance today, listen to There could never be a more beautiful you by Jonny Diaz, 15 by Taylor Swift