Do you love yourself? Do you really, honestly, love who you are? They way you look? The way you laugh, speak and sing? This basic question has been rolling around constantly in my head this summer. I’ve spent most of my life being told to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. In my life I know that it has forever been much easier to love people, to serve them, to put them before myself(okay maybe that one took a lot of work).
If I answer this question honestly I would say, “No, I do not love myself well. I don’t like the way I look, the way my voice sounds when I hear it recorded, the way I laugh, the way I sing…” This list of insecurities and things I don’t like about myself if listed out entirely would be pages and pages long. The truth is that we don’t understand God or his view of us, and in our misunderstanding of God and our rebellious hearts we don’t even understand who we are.
Our insecurities rob us of the joy that God wants to FLOOD into our lives!
The story where I came to this understanding was at my friend Jamie Hewitt’s wedding. I was sitting in the hotel room after the wedding playing guitar with some friends. Blaine, Kyle and I were passing the guitar around to play songs we’d written. For years I’ve been writing songs but have been crippled by insecurity about my singing voice but for some reason this evening I decided to trust that my voice was pleasing to the Lord. I started playing a song called “don’t keep me waiting” which is a song about my frustration with the Lord early in my walk with Christ in which I air my frustration that He is never going to redeem the brokenness of my life. This song had two verses and a chorus but I never had a bridge for it. Sitting here with these friends I cut loose, I finally let myself believe what the Lord has been trying to get through to me for years.
I pray that we learn to love ourselves. Don’t let our insecurities rob us of the Joy that God so overwhelmingly wants to give us. When we live in insecurity we make God to be a liar because we refuse to believe that how he created us is as David says in Psalm 139. David says that we are fearfully and WONDERFULLY made!
When insecurity strikes remember that Jesus looks at us and sees us as fearfully and wonderfully made.
2 comments:
I had a dream one time that I walked into a big room that looked like an artist's studio and on various tables were different piles of raw materials. On one, blobs of paint, on another a pile of rock, and a heap of different colors of what looked like broken glass bottles. The artist walked from table to table commenting how wonderful, beautiful, exquisite, etc each one was. I thought he was a bit kooky and asked him "what is so beautiful about these piles of stuff? Most people would consider these to be just piles of junk!" He said "Come over here and let me show you what I see" and I stepped over to him and kind of stepped "into" him a though I were literally seeing these things through his eyes. I no longer saw a bunch of paint blobs, but the most beautiful painting I had ever seen. The pile of rocks became a gorgeous sculpture, and the broken glass was now an amazing mosaic stained glass. I stepped away and looked again and again saw just piles of "stuff". I asked him "why can't I see things the way you see them?" He told me "because I am the designer and creator of these beautiful things and I see what I intend for them to be. You only see where they are right now in the process."
I was so struck by that dream that when I woke up, I immediately wrote it down. At that point in my life, I was in that place we get when we have read all the verses about how much God loves us and who we are in Christ, but I just couldn't see it in myself. And after this dream, I was perfectly okay with the fact that I may not ever be able to see those things in myself because I am there "right now in the process" and I am not the designer or the creator. But I was assured that even when I can't see the end result, I am going to be a masterpiece one day. And even when all I (or others) see when they look at me is a pile of junk, the One that designed and created me looks at me saying things like "wonderful", "beautiful" and "exquisite".
I'm glad that you reminded me of that dream with this post, because I needed reminding of that!
I Love you so much and I am very proud of the great man that my little cousin is becoming!
~KrickyBean
I am so very much enjoying your blog. It is so blunty honest about your feelings and insecurities...insecurities as you have noted that we all have but many times are afraid to share. Your openness with your heart and fears and life is extremely refreshing. I encourage you to continue this as long as you have inspiration to do so. You don't realize how you may be changing people and their outlook on life and on our Lord. I would like to share them with my youth group if you don't mind.
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