Self-Sacrifice

 

I have always struggled with the idea of self-love.

I have heard a lot of people, much of my life, say this phrase: "You have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else." And pretty much every time I heard that, I went, "Well, that's just absolute garbage." Because guess what? I love everyone, all the time, a whole freaking lot. But myself?

Mmm. Not so much.

It's not that I have ever actively, aggressively HATED myself. But taking care of myself has never been something I knew how to do. I knew how to show love to other people, and I knew how to care for them. But I never thought about applying the same principles to me.

And then there was also the small matter of my personality. As a human, I am generally what I like to call progress-focused. I am never not trying to be better at something. This is, for the most part, a good thing, and I've tended to be pretty proud of it most of the time. In my brain, this was what made me good -- that I wasn't willing to let things slide, even in myself, that I was willing to make changes in order to be submissive to God's will, that I had self-discipline and could self-correct. That was what made me a good person.

All of this constant self-correcting can lead to some pretty negative self-talk, though. Over time, my view of my own value changed. And since this isn't really something I thought about very often, I didn't even really notice it happening. But one day, I woke up and realized that I thought of myself with quite a lot of annoyance. It wasn't hatred, still. But it definitely wasn't love.

I found myself constantly frustrated by how imperfect I am. Sometimes I would get so overwhelmed that I would, actually, feel really bad about myself. Eventually, I tried to stop thinking about me at all, because it was often too painful for me to face all the disappointment I felt.

Focusing on others was helpful for me. I loved helping. I still do. I am never happier than when I'm able to do something spontaneous that helps someone else feel good. But if I'm being honest, I think I sometimes threw myself into serving others in order to avoid having to deal with very real internal issues.

This week, it all sort of became too much. I started to wonder whether or not my life was worth anything to anyone unless I was serving. And serving others became painful and raw. I felt the emptiness inside me, and still I tried to give, desperately, painfully, even though I had absolutely nothing left in me to offer. The joy was gone.

It was at this point that I was able to meet with a dear friend named TJ Holdman. We were on our way to dinner to catch up, and he said something so profound to me as he spoke of his own journey toward self-love. "I think one of the highest moral goods in life is to self-sacrifice," he said. "But you can't sacrifice something you don't care about."

That thought struck me hard. I had to admit I agreed with him -- I, too, believe that self-sacrifice is one of the most noble things human beings are capable of. It's what the Savior did for us. It's what our parents do to raise us. But I had never considered that a prerequisite for sacrifice is that you have to care about the thing you're giving up. This is what gives sacrifice its spiritually sanctifying power: to be willing to give what is most precious to us is Godlike, as it mirrors the gift God gave us in offering us His most precious Son.

This is why in John 15:13 Christ said, "Greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends." The purest act of love we are humanly capable of is to give up our lives for our friends -- but that principle presupposes that our life is something we value highly. It is also why we are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves -- making the assumption that we do love ourselves and treat ourselves as well as we can.

To give something we care nothing about is not a sacrifice. It's a donation. And donations, while usually very meaningful to the recipient, usually do not have the same sanctifying power as a true sacrifice does. But we are not truly capable of self-sacrifice -- the pinnacle of Christlike love -- without first considering ourselves and our lives as precious. 

Learning that I actually did need to love myself in order to fully be capable of perfect love for others was a shock. I had all of these thoughts in the matter of seconds in the passenger seat of TJ's car. I don't think he intended me to have an entire paradigm shift by telling me this, but I definitely did, and it was so necessary. I have come to see how loving oneself is not a selfish thing, it is actually necessary for spiritual growth -- both mine and that of others. When I am able to feel at peace within, I have more to give to those around me.

Knowing that learning to love myself will actually positively impact many others outside of myself is, ironically, what has helped me try to make caring for myself a priority. It's been three days, and I still have no idea what I'm doing, but I have faith that God loves me and will help me give myself the same compassion I give to others. 

I will need help, though. And in the spirit of breaking down unfortunate walls I have built up over the years, I'll tell you that I usually have not let myself ask anyone for help. I have always preferred to try to do things myself. But I know I don't know how to do this alone, so I'm asking you -- you, whoever you are, reading this right now. Will you help me learn to love myself? And will you help anyone else who needs to learn that, too?

Thanks. You're the best. And I love you.