Ah Valentine’s Day. It’s come and gone. I feel like Valentine’s Day is a day that can either be people’s favorite day or least favorite day and for all the others they pretend like it really doesn’t even exist.
This year was no different. We sat around on Valentine’s Day eve and told funny stories from past Valentine’s while making cookies to share with the ladies we worked with at the daycare.
When I woke up in the morning though I remember sitting with the Lord and processing my feelings towards Valentine’s Day. As I was journaling I wrote, “Lord, it’s the day of love. What I really want today is to be able to love myself.”
Now you see, that may sound very egotistical, but it’s actually a very real problem in a lot of people’s lives, not just my own. We spend so much time hearing & knowing that we should love God above all else and love our neighbors that we skip over the “love yourself” part.
Is it really possible to love others or to love God if we don’t love ourselves though?
I was somehow, by the grace of the Lord, up to 1 Corinthians 12&13 on the exact day of February 14th.
Now this is crazy for two reasons. The first is of course that 1 Corinthians 13 is the ever quoted “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
?(?1 Corinthians? ?13:4-5?)
You know? The verse you see everywhere regarding love.
Can you honestly say that you are patient with yourself? That you are kind to yourself? That you don’t envy others gifts or talents over your own? That you are not proud when you do something right?
I can’t say that I am. The person I like least in the world is often myself.
How is it even possible for me to love my neighbor, let alone God, if I can’t even love myself?
The second reason that it’s crazy is because I often compare myself to others.
Why can’t I be good at evangelism like they are?
Why am I not good at intentional conversation like her?
Why am I not as encouraging as them?
But what if we all were exactly the same? What if all of us were only good at evangelism? What if we didn’t have teachers or prophets or the gift of wisdom because we were all only gifted with the same thing?
The world wouldn’t work the same.
“Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.”
??1 Corinthians? ?12:14-18? ?
Really I wanted to just copy & paste the whole chapter here because this is such a good picture of making up the body of Christ.
It’s beautiful though. We can’t all be arms and we can’t all be legs.
“As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”
??1 Corinthians? ?12:20? ?
We are all here working for the same things, loving God and making Him known, but we are all crafted to carry that out in such different ways.
How can I say that God didn’t do a good enough job on me? Who am I to even say that?
So this year for Valentine’s Day, I decided it was time to start loving myself so that I can better love God and the people around me.
It’s okay to love who you are, the Bible actually tells you to do so.
Do you love who you are?
