How I’ve Been Loving Better

Photo by Biel Morro via Unsplash

Let’s just get it out there from the jump: God’s love is making the difference in my life.

Everything has changed, and keeps changing, for the better. Not always for the easier, mind you, but certainly for the better. I’m not here saying something magical happened and now I have no problems in my life. But, there have definitely been… changes. How I labour, how I rest, how I speak, how I approach the world, and how I perceive things have all been subjected to renewal. This has been in progress for a long time, but that last part about how I perceive things, is what I wanted to flesh out a little bit in this post.

New Lens

“How I perceive things [has] been subjected to renewal.”
Photo by Bud Helisson via Unsplash

The way in which my perspective has shifted is incredibly fascinating to me: I view work differently; I view rest differently; I view Him differently; and (the one that has WOWed me the most) I view MYSELF differently. Consequently, there exists a web of things that get reworked too, since they are all connected.

Some of you may know by now that I have my own battles with being mentally/emotionally unwell. It’s a complicated issue. If I were to go into detail, many of you might relate, but it likely wouldn’t be something you would expect of me given the manner in which I present myself to the world. The way I have viewed myself, talked to myself, undermined myself over time… The ways I’ve been intolerant, impatient, unaccepting, etc… are a reality only fully witnessed by me in my own mind. The little things had become big things and all this had affected my motivation and methods for everything else.

“The little things had become big things.”
Photo by Михаил Секацкий via Unsplash

Nevertheless, thank God, a different way has been opening before me everyday. It’s mind-blowing that until stepping into different kinds of newness, it’s hard to even understand the intricacies of what was holding me back in the first place. And alarmingly, being aware, at least, that something is off is not enough. In fact, it can be so draining when you have no idea what to do with it after you’ve acknowledged it.

More often and more intensely, I started to really piece apart how much I’ve lost because of the mental chains this imperfect world had put me in and (let’s face it) that I, being an imperfect being, had kept myself in. As I did that, I honestly started feeling sorry for myself.

Because it’s a slow burn.

There are histories, hesitations and habits that stack up and up and up until you don’t even recognise the cage you’ve been cooped up in.

Love on the Stove

That being said, acknowledging what’s been lost or corrupted is just a minute part of this story. The real stunner, and the most important realisation, is that God is above it. And get this: not only can He bring you above it as well, but He wants to. He desires to be an active player in restoring us. However…

This is not because your Creator needs to restore you to love you. God restores you because He loves you.

Read that again.

“He desires to be an active player in restoring us.”
Photo by Manki Kim via Unsplash

For so long, even after having committed my life to Jesus back in 2011, I really struggled with love. I understood the concept loosely but fumbled with defining and demonstrating it.

If love were a pot on the stove, then I have caught a whiff of the fragrance, felt its warmth and tasted it throughout life, but never fully understood what it was made of and how it came together for a healing dish.

“I’ve felt its warmth…”

Yes, I had ideas about what love looked like, and what it could do, but everyday He’s been helping me restructure my understanding and practice of it, and it’s making waves in my life.

Recently I was speaking with a friend who was struggling with an insecurity about something he could not change. I told him something interesting, and it really only hit me after I had said it:

“I’m not saying you have to love every part of you all the time. A lot of us think the goal is to adore ourselves. The real goal is to accept ourselves.”

It helped me make a connection. Maybe that’s what’s closer to what love is anyways. Not the adoration, but the acceptance. Christ didn’t actually make His sacrifice because He was waiting for us to be perfect enough to love. He already loved us when the decision was made.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8 NKJV)

So why am I so hard on myself for not being perfect? (Whatever the heck that means anyways). God made the ultimate sacrifice for me when I was not the best version of myself and might not even ever be. Or maybe in every moment, I am my best version, and He expands on that as the days go by. Whatever the details of that philosophy, I’m convinced that I can not earn love and I don’t need to.

So why do I work so hard just to even tolerate myself?

And by extension, why should I have subconscious prerequisites met in order to be compassionate with others?

Taste-Testing Love

In Jamaica, we have a proverb that goes, “Dance a yaad before yuh dance abroad.“

It means that whatever attributes we aim to demonstrate in general should be practised in “lesser” contexts too. Don’t wait until some big moment to try to show off your table manners, your patience, your articulation, your whatever. Start here. Start now.

I think it’s wise counsel.

Doesn’t it make sense then, that if we are to be kind to others, we must first practise kindness with ourselves?

“Start here. Start now.”

I’ve been able to show myself much more compassion, and more often, by accepting these gems of truth. These days I find myself saying more truly loving things to myself, such as:

“You didn’t finish because you were tired. And it’s important to take breaks.“

“You’re trying, and that’s good.“

“Yes, things didn’t happen the way you expected today. But how much of that was under your control?“

“It’s good that you acknowledged that you were impatient with that person. You can apologize for what you said in anger.“

“Mistakes don’t define you. They help you learn.“

“You should be proud of the effort you managed today.“

“Yes, there are other people who can do this easily, but everyone has different strengths. Don’t beat yourself up.“

“You don’t have to prove anything; you’re loved as you are.“

For some of you it might seem simple. I don’t know. But for me, it takes effort and awareness to deliberately say these things to myself. I don’t remember when things became like that exactly, but the good news, though, is that just as how berating myself had become a habit, this practice has been cementing itself now, too. And slowly, it’s been overriding the destructive knee-jerk reactions that had taken root over the years.

Sharing it out

The point here is that having some kind of standard is not the villain. What’s shackling us all is withholding love until said standard is met. Not even God, in His perfection and holiness, has withheld love from me for such a reason. So I should accept myself, with all the bumps, blisters, bruises and blood. And that’s how I can effectively “love my neighbour as myself”. My sweet neighbour, my dishonest neighbour, my kind neighbour, my hot-tempered neighbour, my quirky neighbour, my arrogant neighbour, my hurt neighbour, my hurtful neighbour.

Because I am that neighbour too.

It’s difficult, but every day is a new day to practise the recipe. And oh, how filling it is every time!

The thing is, we still have to live in this world. And based on how things work here, it’s difficult to separate what people have taught you love is (even in the church) – of who they’ve said God is – from what love actually is. And when the Word said God is love (1 John 4:16), it really goes so, so, deep.

As a believer, what you truly think about who God is, will be reflected by how you love.

And many of us are walking around with a distorted perception of God; hence, we love ourselves and others so ineffectively and unrealistically.

To love better, we have to truly get to know God better, for ourselves. It’s a lifelong process, but it adds so much richness to the story, and the development along the way is for our benefit. I’m not saying this is a linear journey. We will fall back into old behaviours sometimes, but we can, in goodwill, get up and try again, because we’ve been given the grace to do so.

“Get up and try again.”
Photo by Esther Ann via Unsplash

I wanted to share all this because I’ve been contemplating it for a while. And I suppose it’s a testimony of some sort. I want to remember this when I fall back down, that I’m learning to love better, because I’m loving myself better, because God gave me the ultimate example.

So yeah, I’m not perfect, but God loves me anyways. And that’s what’s making the difference in my life.

And you know what?

I’m genuinely excited to see what He’ll change next.

© 2022 Sihle Atkinson – All Rights Reserved