Part of my starting over journey has involved me reading Love life again by Tracie Miles, recommended to be by a good friend. I am not very far into the book, but the chapter on loving yourself and recognizing your value really stuck out to me, so I decided to write about that today because that is something I sometimes forget. I know my value comes from Christ, but do I really know it deep in my heart… hmm. A lot of times I think I question that even though I know God is a good of truth and that he means every word he says. So I want to talk about ways we can love ourselves better, ways we can defeat the lies, what kind of lies we deal with, how it creeps up into our lives, and how it affects our relationships… because honestly even once you remove toxic people, if you don’t work on healing the toxic thinking, you still won’t go very far. I want to actually get further than I have, I want full healing from my past and I want full healing for you too. Perhaps you haven’t had the trauma that I have had, but you still struggle with lies. Tracie mentions in her book that a study showed women have bad thoughts about their bodies almost at least an hour a day….that’s a lot. So, it’s apparent that we really do have a problem loving ourselves whether it’s from sexual abusive, verbal abuse, racism, toxic friends, society’s toxic beauty standards, men expecting us to be sex objects, our mental illnesses tricking us, or just sin all around. We need to actively love ourselves because if we don’t, we will be torn apart. The devil is busy, he wants to distract us and keep us from experiencing peace and joy in Christ. Here’s a link to my previous blog https://traveldogloverangel.blogspot.com/2020/06/starting-over.html
I won’t go into extreme detail about my past because I have a lot in my other blog posts, but I’ve been rejected and put down a lot since I was a young kid. From peers, to so called friends, to crushes, ex boyfriends, and even family members. I think over the years it took a toll on me, but in different ways. Like in middle school when I was bullied, I decided to starve myself (whenever I could get away with it) to get skinnier and I fell in love with dancing (which was the good side to things, a good outlet besides giving my sorrows to the Lord during my prayer time). But in high school I wasn’t as concerned with my looks as much as I was trying to fit in somewhere. Once I found a group of friends, and actually realized I kind of fit in well with everyone, I was pretty comfortable. Still, I felt I always needed to make everyone around me happy. I wasn’t really concerned about how I felt as much as how I made others feel. In college I realized the importance of spending time daily in the Bible and in prayer, listening closely to what God wanted to say and for his guidance. It was during my first mission trip with Cru to Panama City Beach Florida (my freshman year of college) where we witnessed to people on the beach, where I learned I needed to spend more time with God. I also saw Him work in big ways each and every day, and I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit constantly. I wanted this everyday, so I decided to keep up with my daily quiet time with the Lord. When I did this, I felt more confident in who I was than ever before because I began to realize my worth really came from Jesus and not from who I am as a person. In a perfect world that would be the end of the story and I would have continued loving myself perfectly ever since, but life happens and it’s not that simple. From my experience as a Christ follower, you don’t just keep going upward on a perfect path. Maybe for you, you have and if so I am so proud of you and commend you. But for me, and some others, we mess up. We fall, we stumble a bit. We have to get back up and ask for forgiveness and continue on.
When I look in the mirror, most days I am happy with what I see. It’s often the past regrets that bother me. Or the fear of not measuring up. Although, I will admit I occasionally wish I could change some things about my appearance, namely, my skin color. I really wish I were a lot darker. I can’t stand that I am so light skinned for someone who is biracial. I think I would be a lot prettier if I had chocolate skin. I think my white friends are beautiful, each of them and I think each of my black friends are beautiful. I wouldn’t change anything about them. But aside from my skin tone, I am mostly happy with my appearance. It’s the worrying about my disabilities holding me back in life, my personality, me in general that makes me wonder why anyone gives me the time of day. It’s funny because I like who I am as a person, aside from having my disabilities. But I didn’t choose those and I have to make the best of the life I’ve been given. One of my friends a few years ago said she was jealous of me because of how beautiful I was, because I had the perfect life, and because of my personality. I was taken aback. Why? Well, because… she was getting married a few months before me so it’s not like I had something she didn’t. She was not ugly…quite the contrary! Beautiful brown hair and lots of beautiful face freckles. She was also skinnier than me. She had a nice job lined up for her after she graduated college involving children. I mean I do like my personality, I will give myself that, but she has a good one too. I was just shocked. I couldn’t understand why she would be jealous of me when she had everything she could ever want right in front of her and I didn’t have anything better. She also put me on a pedestal and it made me uncomfortable because… well I am not perfect. She kept saying I was and that nothing I ever did could make her like me any less. It was strange, I’ve never quite had anyone admire me so much. I mean why did she like me so much? *insert nervous laughter*
I bet now she laughs to herself because she was two kids and I have none, but I am pretty happy with where I am in life. I have never been jealous of anyone else. The reason I bring up what she said is how how we view ourselves is different than how others see us. She saw me different than I saw myself and I saw her in a different light than she saw herself.
I can fall into an old pattern of seeing myself a lot of times as a burden, as inferior to those around me, annoying, never good enough, just an afterthought to most, easily forgotten. But, those are also words that were told to me by people who really didn’t care and are also lies of Satan. These are also lies I have heard other women I know say they’ve dealt with, which is why I am discussing this. They’re LIES. Sometimes it’s a daily battle with my mind to remind myself that the negative thoughts going through my mind are not how God sees me and they aren’t how those who love me see me, and they aren’t how I should see myself. I have proof that they are lies from my friends and from God himself. My friends have told me lately that they love my naturally curly hair. They enjoy my heart for others and my love for animals. That they find me hilarious. I also find that they respond to my text messages, they want to hangout, they stay in touch even years after being friends and they offer compassion, empathy, and understanding, especially one in particular. I think it wouldn’t be fair for me to say my friends don’t care about me, given the ways that they have shown that they do. And I’ve got to quit letting the bad people of the past try and ruin the good now.
The devil wants to kill and destroy, so even when you get rid of bad, trust me he’s going to come for what good you’ve got in your life too. When I first got married I had a dream where there was a demon that looked like a gross dragon wolf mixture, and it said it was going to kill me and destroy my marriage. I also had those same words whispered to me several times throughout the first year of my marriage and believe me Satan came at us hard, especially at me. He had family try to divide us. Narcissism runs in both sides of the family and the spirit of jezebel too. We prayed against it and my pastor helped us too. Then those former toxic friends kept trying to tell me I needed to spend all my free time with them only and none of my off days with my husband. They always talked bad of my marriage when my husband was and is amazing. Always pray, always be on guard because the enemy is always ready to attack. Be careful who you allow in your life because the devil will use whatever tools are at his disposal to ruin you if and the keyword is IF you allow it. We saw the signs and we weren’t having it. So we fought back and in order to fight back you have to give things over to Christ. So when it comes to loving yourself and experiencing joy, it only makes sense that you have to fight for it too, right? So you give it to Christ and you actively work toward joy. Four years later, I’m still here and my marriage is stronger than ever, so I am proof that prayer and giving your troubles to Christ works. And I am proof that you have to fight for things. You can’t just passively sit by. You have to actively work to have the life you want. You want joy, you have to put effort into it. You want a marriage unbothered by troublemakers? You’ve gotta stay prayed up and keep an eye out for anyone who doesn’t belong.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 NIV
It is better to take refuge in the Lord Than to trust in man. Psalm 118:8 NIV
Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7 NIV
One of the first things we need to do in order to love ourselves and feel joy is to ask God for forgiveness for not believing what He said is true about us. We also need to thank Him for all of the good He has placed in our lives. Once we have done that, we can ask God to help us love ourselves the way that He loves us. To help us see ourselves the way he sees us. It won’t happen overnight and it may be a lifelong journey, but I believe with each and every day it’ll get better. We need to quit dismissing compliments and words of affirmation and love that our friends and family tell us. Oh I am so bad at this because I will be so happy when someone I care about says something good about me, but then there will be that nagging voice in the back of my mind that says “ they were just being nice. They don’t really mean that”. We need to shut that negative talk down because it is the devil lying to use and trying to ruin our good relationships. We’ve got to believe that if our loved ones put in the effort to go out of their way to tell us that they care, to text us back, to actually listen and give sound advice, to want to spend time with us, to edify us...then they actually mean what they say. We owe it to ourselves and them to accept their love and receive it. Oh and don’t forget to return the love because ya know one sided friendships are awful and of course not of God l (I’ve been in a few of those as the sole giver, hence why I am a bit slower to trust). If we allow ourselves to be loved by others and we allow ourselves to be loved by God it will become natural for us to love ourselves too. We will start to see ourselves in a more positive light.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9 NIV
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 John 3:1 NIV
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:14 NIV
When we are working on becoming more like Christ and growing in our relationship with Him, we will be attacked by Satan because he likes to cause us to stumble and wants to keep us down. He will likely throw a lot more negative thoughts as we work to change those thoughts, but don’t worry we can win this battle because we have Jesus. We can denounce bad thoughts in the name of Jesus and hold them captive. After we get rid of those bad thoughts we need to replace them with positive thoughts and TRUE facts about who we are in Christ. We need to tell ourselves that we are loved and treasured. That he will never forsake us and that he has big plans for us. That we are precious in his sight. If we keep these truths in our minds it will become second nature eventually to think of those whenever a bad thought pops up. I am really excited to work on this myself because I used to be victim to not knowing how to deal with uncontrolled thoughts that I didn’t want. Little did I know I actually had the power to handle those thanks to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. So I am thrilled to get back to reigning in my brain a bit more and being less controlled by the emotions of those around me and worrying about them, as well as the intrusive thoughts that pop up into my head. And I am excited for you that you will have freedom too.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
Another way to experience joy fully is to do what makes you happy (as long as it is something that also makes God happy). Let go of what others think (easy for me to say, as I have become way too worried about the emotions of others and making people happy). But this past week during my anniversary trip, being away in nature really put things into perspective. I am happiest when I am outdoors in nature on a nice summer day. It is freeing. I really can break free from people pleasing because I’ve done it before and I am going to do it now. I am just going to embrace being me. I am going to embrace loving nature, swimming, hiking and the like. I am going to own being that crazy dog girl who loves dogs just as much as people and who loves my own as if they were my human children. Yes I like female dogs better than male dogs (except for my first dog Luke) and I don’t want another male dog ever again. Pomeranians are the best dogs ever and I love dachshunds too. I may be a city slicker but I am a country girl at heart and I admire country gals a lot. I am very girly in how I dress but that doesn’t mean I am high maintenance. I am down for some fun at the lake or getting dirty. Let’s have a party and crank up the country music and you teach me how to square dance. Or let’s chill out to some smooth jazz. Let’s dance like no one is watching. I like to hold hands with my friends and hug. I don’t see a problem with that? I have some annoying disabilities but I have one neurological condition that actually makes life more enjoyable in some ways. It helps me love deeper than the average person and I can enjoy music on a deeper level too. I mention it halfway through this blog here if you wanna know more : https://traveldogloverangel.blogspot.com/2020/04/inside-brain-of-non-neurotypical.html
But yeah, you get the point I’m making right. Embrace who you are and love it because you are awesome just as you are! Your real fans will love everything about you <3
If you give thanks for all the blessings you have each day, as well as every good thing that happened to you that day then you will find that you will be filled with joy too. Because honestly, we all are so blessed in so many ways. Sometimes we let our problems take over and we forget that having a home, animals, a spouse, friends, money, food, etc. are all such blessings. Being alive, being healthy, are all blessings. Anything good is a blessing from God. Let’s remember to give thanks to our awesome creator every day! Also every now and then check in on your besties and see how they’re doing. A simple text may make their day and it is always good to know how you can pray for them. We can all work together to keep each other accountable in terms of making sure we all love ourselves and each other well. Thank God for the gift of friendship.
The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. Proverbs 12:26 NIV
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17 NIV
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