Wednesday Wonder

Sitting in my home office last night I started doing some decluttering. This included of my old laptop that I use to help me find hymn suggestions. The wallpaper of that laptop is covered in digital sticky notes. All those notes have sayings or quotes on them that I put there to inspire me when that was the laptop I used everyday.

I was thinking I should either delete those notes or put them on my present laptop. So, I started to read through them all. This one jumped out at me:

“You don’t feel bad about yourself when you get fat. You get fat when you feel bad about yourself.”

Now, I am not here to debate the language or to hope people will tell me I am not fat. Why? Because this note no longer holds the same meaning it did when I first pinned it to my wallpaper.

After the Bible study sessions this week, I looked at the saying and realized it spoke to me in a different way. Yes, it originally went up when I was trying to motivate myself to lose weight. It might have also motivated me to think about why I was eating. And that is what stands out for me today.

As I mentioned in Bible study, Jesus gave us two commandments: to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself. I think that actually makes three commandments. 1. Loving God. 2. Loving neighbour. 3. Loving self.

My little sticky is a reminder of that last one. It is assumed by Jesus that we can love our neighbour because we love ourselves. But do we? The sticky also reminds me that these days, body image and other issues which impact our ability to love ourselves are everywhere. More and more not just young people but all people are inundated with messages that make us feel unworthy, unlovable, unable to ever measure up.

Young people, of all genders, are seeing content that makes them think they have to be different than they are, young parents are seeing content that makes them feel that they are not doing enough, or doing it correctly, or somehow failing at the parenting role. And, if my social media feeds and suggestions are any indication, those of us who are aging a little higher in the decades are being told that we have to do retirement in a particular way or we are wasting our time, or we should be doing particular exercise programs or we won’t age properly and become unable to move or think. It never stops.

Lately, it has been content about all the ways to spend my ‘free’ time that would be more productive. Frankly, if sitting in my favourite chair reading a book all day on my day off isn’t as productive as some guru thinks I should be, then they don’t need to be part of my content. Because if I spend a day reading a good book, then I am much more productive in other parts of my life after that.

The point is, do you love yourself? Yes, we can always find something about ourselves that we would like to change, or compared to someone else we feel leaves us lacking. But, why are we comparing ourselves to someone else’s expectations and life? My life is different. My expectations for my life are different.

As I have matured, I have given up my unrealistic expectations for myself around my body image. And given all my body has been through the last couple of years, I am going to cut it some slack. Would I like to be more slender and fit into clothes differently, sure. Can I look like a supermodel, no. But I don’t need to for my life. These days I need to be a soft, comfortable place for my grandson to snuggle. Well, I am.

I may not have given up all my unrealistic expectations about life yet, but at least now I know they are unrealistic and treat them as such. Doesn’t mean I don’t try to improve myself, but 1% is enough. I no longer need to be perfect. Yes, I still set the bar high, but now I am gentler with myself when I don’t meet that self-imposed goal.

As I have matured, I have come to love myself better. And I am noticing that my ability to give myself a bit more grace at times allows me to extend it to others. Do I still get exasperated? You bet! But, I also get more loving. Because I love me more, I can love others more too.

Working on loving myself isn’t selfish as was sometimes the message, that work allows me to love others more too.

And Jesus told me to do so.