Loving Ourselves

I had a major revelation today. Life-changing. I know I say this quite a bit, but at this season of my life, I'm having a lot of life-changing things happening. Life-changing thoughts, revelations, conversations. Anyway, the revelation was:

I love myself. Wait, let me say it again, this time with feeling.

I LOVE MYSELF.   

Do you all love yourselves? I hope so. For me, this was a new feeling, so new and amazing and wonderful that I had to rush to a computer (not an easy task on this journey I'm on) and blog about it.

I'm not sure I've felt love for myself before, in the way that I experienced today. Sure, I have intellectually loved myself before; I have looked at myself objectively, asked myself if I would be friends with myself if I happened to meet "Katie Brotten" in a class or at church or through a mutual friend. Yes, I probably would become friends with myself. I have thought about things I've done in my life, to see if I'm proud of those things. Yes, I'm proud of those things. I think about certain qualities I have that I'm happy about. I love those qualities, and so can connect the dots and feel love for myself because of those qualities. I looked at things I've gone through and tried to see myself as the kid that I was at the time I went through those things, and felt love for that 5-year-old or that 10-year-old, even 23-year-old, 31-year-old. Yes, I can love that person who went through those things. I feel compassion for her, I feel a sort of protectiveness over her. Sure, I love her. I love myself. Why not?

These are all important things, but what I felt today was different. It wasn't based on what I have accomplished or what I went through. It wasn't based on if I was, by my standard, a "good enough" person to be loved (because, everyone is good enough to be loved, by people, by their dog, by God... there is not 1 person who isn't loved by God, and loved immensely and unconditionally by God), or by whether or not I was worthy of being my own friend. It wasn't based on any of these outside factors. I just felt, somewhere in my soul, in my body, in my mind, in my heart, that I loved myself. I started smiling, and I felt such a wonderful sense of peace.

The funny thing was, this all came about as I was talking about things I didn't like about myself. I was talking with a group of wonderful people I have met on my journey, and we were talking about the things in our lives that bring us feelings of guilt, or even of shame. The parts of ourselves that we don't like to talk about or share with anyone, because we think, "How could I be like that? How could I have done that, said that, acted that way?" And somehow, in the midst of this conversation, I suddenly felt so much love for myself.

We all have areas in our lives we would like to improve upon. Aspects of our personality, flaws in our character, our perspective and the way we view the world around us, things that we allow ourselves to do or say that may not be the best... This is kind of why we are here in this life, to become our best, to grow and progress and be more like who we want (or who God wants us) to be. This is a journey that we are all on, a lifetime worth of work. This is my perspective, anyway, my view on the purpose of life. I am going to continually learn and grow and progress, and never say to myself, "Okay, I've done it. I have no more room to grow as a person." I want to be open to ideas of improvement, open to change, for my entire life. That feels like success to me.

And I can love myself the entire time. I don't have to start loving myself only when I have reached this benchmark, or this milestone, or have ironed out this particular flaw that I see in my character. I not only "can" love myself, but I "do" love myself, and when I felt that today, maybe for the first time ever, I felt joy. And I felt so much love. It just washed over me. I saw myself as a person with flaws, with funny little quirks that so often seem annoying and frustrating and even horrible. I saw myself as someone who is always searching and seeking, open to new ideas, open to improvement. I saw someone who made mistakes, who will probably continue to make mistakes, and somehow, I love myself even with those mistakes. And maybe, as weird as this sounds, because of those mistakes. Because I could see them, because I was acknowledging them, and because I was seeing what I could do to not make those mistakes again. It was like the pressure was off; I'm human and make all sorts of mistakes, and yet I am loved and lovable, and love myself. I am trying my best in all sorts of situations, I sometimes stumble, I sometimes do incredibly ridiculous/stupid/needy/irritating things, and yet... love. I think another thing that happened today, and I'm only realizing it now as I'm writing, was that I forgave myself for mistakes I've made. It was love and forgiveness all together, and it was awesome.

I am trying to explain what happened for the sake of communication, but more than what I have written, it was just a feeling. It seems silly to try to intellectualize it now, because how can we intellectualize a feeling? Love usually is just a feeling, after all. How many of us can say, "Well, I love him because of these 17 reasons and that's it," or, "My love for her is at about an 89%; not enough to get married, but getting close." We love because we love; there is not some formula or reasoning involved. It's just love.

It's been said that we have a greater capacity to give love when we love ourselves. It's also been said that we can understand other people's love of us when we love ourselves. I am so grateful for today, and for this revelation. God is good. And God is also love.