Love Yourself

I am thinking a lot at the moment about being a parent even though my girls are all beautiful grown women who make my heart burst with pride. In 2 weeks I will be a grandparent my eldest daughter is expecting her first baby and both myself and Alan are giddy at the thought of meeting this baby who we know will change our lives in the way having the girls did.

Loving yourself is never easy in fact most of us are aware how we fail at being all we aspire to be. We are ‘our own worst critic’ no one could be more frustrated with us than we often are with ourselves.

There is a beautiful Psalm in the Bible that tells us we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’. I think of my grandchild growing in Jen’s womb, silently becoming this most beautiful creation, already so very, very loved and I ask myself ‘how can I best serve this little person’?

Think about this for a moment your child is going to watch your every move and listen to all you say, there are lots you can get away with when they are little but very quickly they mimic you and learn how you react to the world around you. Are you full of self-doubt, fear that you are not good enough? This loving of our self is vitally important, Of course you are not perfect no one is but in your child’s eyes you are, you need to live up to that by taking care of yourself, resting well, learning that the housework will keep; they on the other hand will grow up so very quickly and then you can clean house all day if you want too!

I look at the young mums today and I wish I could impress on them their value and worth. They matter so much to the precious gift that is their child. The best gift then is to love who you are, I cannot stress this enough after all the opposite would be to dislike who you are and even more than that to be hateful towards yourself and not be careful and how could you then care for your child/children? How I long to help those I meet to see the beauty in themselves. I see in the course of my work as a nurse so many taking antidepressants to help them feel better about who they are and I am the first to say if you need it take it but sometimes I know why people medicate and its due to their inability to love themselves.

Matthew 22:37

Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

'Love others as well as you love yourself.'

Why do we find this so hard, this action of loving ourselves? Please lovely ladies, those who are mummies, mummies to be, beautiful single ladies of every age, love yourself. The next generation are watching you!!!

Psalm 139 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand when I awake, I am still with you.