Dear Ones,
Hope you have a wonderful day becoming better at loving yourself. We enjoyed time with friends yesterday and being at the lake. Today I have exercise, crafts, Bible study and hopefully some baking.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
Jesus word to us is that we are to love Him, to love ourselves and to love our neighbors as ourselves. (James 2:8) Sounds simple but it isn’t always easy to separate self-love from just being selfish. So much of culture today is all about “me-ism”. This is good for me, me, me!  Of course, we can also err by doing so much as parents for our kids and putting our needs last that our children grow up very self-centered. That is not good either. Psychologist, Martin Padovani writes how we need honesty and a questioning of our motives to love ourselves without being selfish. We need balance to walk this fine line!

To love ourselves will include a healthy self-love, and self-respect and the experience of loving others. We learn to handle hurt and practice self-discipline and sacrifice. It also means we recognize our own needs before we can recognize the needs of others and have the strength to reach out to them. Like Padovani wrote, “Self-love turns inward, only to turn outward to others. Selfishness turns inward and remains there—and dies.”  We all need times to rest and get refreshed so that we can continue to give and help others. If we fail to do this we can burn out.

When we love ourselves, we should not be afraid to look at ourselves critically but be open to gain insight that can be constructive and positive. How can we mature if we ignore self-criticism rather than go on to grow, learn through our failures and handle change. Self-criticism is not the same as self-condemnation that leaves us feeling worthless. Self-criticism helps us to realize we can become better, grow and know ourselves better.

Let us choose to go on to emotional and spiritual maturity by loving ourselves and being open to self-criticism, not self-condemning.

Challenge for today: Write down a few ways you can love yourself better, which will enable you to love others as well.
Blessings and prayers and love, Judy