Love Your Neighbor...and Yourself

It was a great weekend and very busy.

In effort to stay active,  try to exercise on the weekends and to involve my kids in the activity (See my last blog post), I decided to take my kids ice skating.  Well, I think the high on Saturday was about 15 degrees, so we went with the alternative - roller skating.  I have not been roller skating in about 25 years but it came back to me pretty quickly and we had SO much fun!  After about an hour and a half into our two hour session I input "roller skating for 90 min" into myfitnesspal and was shocked to see that I had burned 1157 calories - and I was having fun!  Whoo-hoo!  Needless to say, we will be roller skating more often.  It was quality time spent with my girls, it was fun and it was healthy.  (We didn't go near the snack bar area).

Sunday was another story.  It began with running late for church (as always) and then suddenly it was 9pm.   I was completely exhausted.  Still had not worked out, lunches for the week had not been made, had not eaten dinner yet and not one load of laundry had been put in the washer. Then the negative self talk started...

I was upset that I had just said on Friday that "I don't have time" was no longer an excuse; exercising was going to be a priority and Saturday and Sundays were the two days I had time to do it so I committed myself to working out every Saturday and Sunday.  I started going down into my typical negative self talk spiral that seemed so familiar.  Before I even had a chance to THINK about grabbing something to eat to stuff the feelings down I made a quick decision to do what I could in two hours to get ready for the week, go to bed an hour early and set the alarm for 4:30am and try again in the morning.  And I did it!

Today I feel great - my workout is complete and I might even have the energy to walk on the treadmill a little bit tonight.  We'll see.

But back to that spiral I started to go down.  I was thinking today about how quickly I can go from feeling on top of the world to self pity-negative-self talk and getting down on myself.  Honestly, the things I say to myself I would NEVER say to another living being ...it wouldn't even cross my mind.  Then I had another thought - what does the Bible say about self esteem?

I know that was a term coined in the 20th century and the Bible says nothing about self esteem, but is self esteem important?  It doesn't really say.  Jesus does say that the two greatest commandments of all are to love Him will all of our hearts, souls, and minds and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Mark 12:30-31)  But what if we don't love our self?  Is that breaking one of the two greatest commandments?  In my opinion. yes it is.  How can we love our neighbors as we love ourselves if we don't love ourselves?  And how can nasty negative self talk be love?  Its not.

The most famous Biblical chapter on love is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Part of this process is going to have to also be a process of learning to love myself...on the days when I don't work out, on the days when I totally blow it and even on the dreaded days when I notice a 5lb weight gain.  I refuse to beat myself up over one missed workout. I will continue to do what I did last night - I will readjust and keep moving forward...or as Dori says "Just keep swimming!"