Love Yourself

Loving others, even when you don’t like them, can be tough. But at the end of the day, you can usually get by. Except for the frustrating college roommate or sibling, you can go home and be alone. You can find people who you do like and hang out with them.

But yourself? Well, there’s no escaping yourself.

So… How can we love ourselves?

If That’s Alright

There’s a song called “If That’s Alright” that I absolutely love. It goes like this.

“Crowded bar, corner booth
It’s getting hard not to look at you
‘Cause there you are across the room
A work of art that I’m gonna lose”

I know that you want me for your story that you tell yourself
I know I look lonely and I sound crazy, but I’m doing well

‘Cause I’m just falling in love with myself tonight.
I’m not scared of being alone with my hell of a mind
Now I’m not trying to be rude. I love everything about you
But I’m just falling in love with myself tonight
If that’s alright”

The line that really gets me is, “I’m not scared of being alone with my hell of a mind.” Now, I realize that some people might not appreciate the usage of language, but the imagery is stark.

For people who struggle with depression or anxiety, being alone with their mind can feel hellish. For people who struggle constantly against the fight against sin, it seems like their mind is out to get them. To be alone, without a way to distract yourself from your constant internal monologue, can be terrifying.

So, how can we start to love ourselves despite that?

The Start of Self-Love

For some people, self-love is terrifying, or might feel improper. However, there’s a sharp distinction between self-love and narcissism. Self-love is having a proper view of yourself. Narcissism is having a inflated view of yourself.

To love yourself properly, you need to start with honest acceptance. You need to realize that you’re not just comprised of your flaws. You have a lot of good qualities, too. I can’t convince you of that – you need to realize it yourself.

Once you realize that you’re both flawed and skilled, that you have good qualities and bad, you can start identifying those things about yourself. Again, this has to be done in honesty. Honestly assess your capabilities, or have someone you trust help you analyze yourself. At the end of the day, it’s about what you believe. Not what someone else tells you.

I can tell you the truths of Scripture, and tell you how much God loves you – and I will, don’t worry about that – but when you don’t feel those truths, it’s hard to accept them. It doesn’t make them any less true – just less impactful than they should be.

Integrity and Grace

If you know me, you may have heard me reference this phrase. Those two words have become very important to me over the past year and a half.

A lot of people will often address the idea of Truth and Grace – tell others the truth, but do it in a graceful manner (e.g., speak the truth in love). However, I prefer the term integrity. Truth is an impersonal fact – Integrity is just as real, but it’s personalized – it’s part of your identity.

I bring this up because I believe these two words should direct how we interact with ourselves.

Integrity

Integrity means knowing what you know is right and wrong, and holding fast to it. Knowing that there is a standard, and holding yourself to it. To use our example from above, you know that you shouldn’t fall into sin, and you make efforts to not.

Additionally, it means making sure your personal life and your public life are in correspondence with each other. That doesn’t mean taking the worst version of yourself and putting it on display, it means making sure you’re not pretending to have it all together when you don’t.

Now, these rules can be applied to external relationships, but I want to focus on internal. In your inner dialogue, integrity means being honest with yourself.

If you can’t be honest with yourself, who can you be honest with?

For me, that meant that I stopped lying when I wrote in my journal. I let myself be honest about how things were going in my life. I’ll admit, it hurt to write sometimes. But it was the hurt of release – I knew I was trying to keep things in the dark.

Grace

On the other hand, you need to have grace for yourself, too. Recognize that you’re imperfect, and that you will fall. When you do, don’t beat yourself up over it.

Remember, the grace others extend to you will only go as far as the grace you extend yourself.

Grace doesn’t mean excusing what’s going on. It means recognizing that there are days when temptations come stronger and the dark thoughts are thicker. It doesn’t mean letting yourself stay in your sin – it means not abusing yourself over a mistake.

The Christian Identity and Integrity

When we look at Integrity and Grace in regards to our identity as Christians, these same themes play out.

Here, Integrity is recognizing that our identity isn’t made from our sins, but rather our redemption in Jesus Christ. All throughout the new testament, our former sinful life are referred to as the “Old Self” (2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 4:22-24). Instead, we put on our new self.

Time and time again, Paul writes letters to churches and addresses them as “saints” – meaning sanctified (made clean). He proceeds to address sin problems in their churches.

So often we say, “I am a sinner saved by grace, and that’s all I am.” But time and time again, God says, “No, you are not just a sinner. You are a saint. You are called my children, my treasure. You are my workmanship. You are saved by grace to be called holy and blameless, no longer a sinner.”

For a further look at what God says, take a look at Who We Are In Christ, created by John Stumbo.

When we have a proper view of our new self and our duty as Christians, we have basis for the integrity we need to have. From there, we enter into the challenge of Grace.

After recognizing that formerly we were sinners, but, through the blood of Christ, we are the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), we need to acknowledge that we still sin.

After recognizing that the Bible says, “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” (Philippians 4:7), we need to acknowledge that we don’t always feel that peace.

So how can we give ourselves grace?

The Christian Identity and Grace

When we face the moments that leave us doubting our faith and our salvation, we need to recognize that, while our citizenship is in Heaven, we live in a broken world. More than that, our weaknesses have a way of adapting to find new ways to torment you.

For example, when starting a new season of my life, I realized that an old sin – that I thought was dead and gone – had begun to creep back into my life. However, Josh Garver talked me through everything that I’ve just said, and helped me realize that while it’s the same sin, it’s a different strain. It had found a new chink in my armor and taken advantage of it. He encouraged to give myself grace – not to accept the sin by any means, but to acknowledge that I had to figure out new ways to fight against it.

In the same way, just because you had a period of experiencing God’s peace doesn’t mean you won’t ever face depression or anxiety again. But keep fighting – you’ll figure out how to beat it and grow stronger because of it.

Then the process will continue, all the way until God decides to call us home. Just like Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, we long to be clothed in our heavenly bodies. Until such a time, we groan with the burdens of this broken world (2 Corinthians 5:1-4).

In the moments when it feels like you’re regressing, though, recognize that it’s natural. Even Paul had a thorn in his flesh. At the same time, though, don’t let yourself stay there.

That’s what grace means.

Closing Thoughts

The Christian life is a journey. Integrity – being honest – gives you an idea of where you should be on that journey. More than that, each journey is different. Don’t expect that just because one person is freed from their depression or sin habit that you’ll get the same kind of healing. Recognize areas of weakness in your life.

Grace gives us the motivation to keep going. Recognize that when Christ died, he paid for all sins, past, present and future. That means that the sin you commit tomorrow? He’s covered it with his grace. So give yourself grace, too. Time and time again, he will say, “Go and sin no more.” Again, it’s not a license to stay there in your sins. It’s what allows us to get back up again, even when we don’t want to.

To borrow the words of Josh Rutledge, one of the vice-presidents of Spiritual Development at Liberty University, we are saints who sometimes act like sinners, not sinners who occasionally act like saints.

So love yourself knowing that God loves you, has adopted you into His family, and calls you His own.

Maybe you’ll never stop being afraid of being alone with your hell of a mind. But I pray that you’ll hold onto the hope of heaven, and the redemption that is waiting there for us.

As always, further thoughts are always welcome.

(Check out If That’s Alright by Dylan Dunlap (Lyric Video). Looking for more on the subject of love? Here’s our Look at Love. Thank you to Josh Garver, John Stumbo and Josh Rutledge for providing most of the material here)