Learning to like myself

04 Oct Learning to like myself

For many women, loving ourselves is one of the greatest fields of learning in our lives. We grow up with models of seemingly “perfect women” presented in the media. It is a cinch for them to keep 90-60-90 measurements permanently, to combine career and family with ease and to always smile.

What a dangerous delusion! Have you perhaps ever compared yourself with such “superwomen”? Honestly, there is a great danger for our spiritual well-being. I would like to tell you today: You are valuable and amazing! With all your quirks, your pounds, your grey hair and whatever else you don’t like about yourself. 

I was allowed to learn this myself in a hard school: My father told me almost daily until I left home that I was “not enough”. Not pretty enough because I was overweight, not ambitious enough because I only got average grades from school, not determined enough because I was too social in his mind, etc… I cried almost daily because I didn’t feel loved and accepted as I was. This caused deep cracks in my heart. I took over his gaze on me, suffered and compensated my hunger for love by eating. An eating addiction developed. Of course, the increase in weight further exacerbated the problem. He wanted to encourage me by this, to reach out for the best.

But an odyssey of suffering began. Fortunately, at the age of 22, I got to know Jesus. What a revelation for me: He loves me as I am. Wow! That was incomprehensible at first. But I allowed him to fill all the cracks in my heart with his love and acceptance. He healed me. 

I want to give you courage today: We will never be pretty enough or successful enough if we compare ourselves to illusions superwomen. Nobody fits into these stencils. We need a different view of ourselves, if we want to learn to like ourselves more.

We need to put on the glasses of Jesus and look at ourselves with his eyes. He has “woven you in the womb of your mother” (Psalm 129:13) and also speaks the words from Genesis 1 about you: “And God saw (all) things that he had made, and behold, they were very good.” You are very good and wonderful. For you are designed by the most perfect and most ingenious that can ever exist: God himself!

If He says that You are wonderful, then You may believe that and accept it for Yourself. Say like David: “I thank you that I am amazingly and wonderfully made! (Psalm 139) Speak out the truth about yourself.

Perhaps it is not so easy for you because people or experiences have put false glasses on you. But you know what – Jesus is the liberator. “Whom the Son of Man makes free, he makes completely free!” (Joh. 8,36) Turn to Him, that He may take away your deceptive spectacles and put on His. He will do it and free you from lies and self rejection. He – the perfect one – loves you as you are. Then you too may do this.

He looks into your heart, sees all the beauty and all the weakness in you. But he doesn`t condemn you. You are his precious rough diamond and he grinds you constantly, so that your brilliance and luminosity gain more and more strength. If he loves you so much, then you may do the same as he does. 

THE AUTHOR