You can only give what you have. That statement has been ringing in my ears the past year. Funny enough how I’ve taken this statement for granted, until this past week, it all came to headway.
We ran The PIN Code course in Stellenbsoch this past week, and as the participants were sharing their life stories, the theme of the lack of self-love, kept speaking to my heart. As Christians, all to often we have distorted ideas of loving oneself with a heavy sense of guilt and condemnation and so we default into “overly loving” those around us at our own expense.
When I transitioned from singlehood to marriage, I also changed my job and my home. Talk about big transitions. So as I was finding my way down here in Cape Town, the Father started to speak to me about being selfish…that I had to love myself more.
At first I ignored it. Then Grace started to say it, to which I argued with her. But then the final straw was meeting a mentor of mine, I don’t see him often but we meet at the oddest times and most interesting places…. and then he said it. “David you need to love yourself more.” OK, so I decided to take notice.
That week I started loving myself by cutting down on helping others. Wow! Immediately, I was having conflict with friends, to which my old role was something they relied on.
Another area of “loving myself” was in what I do in our mission’s organization. For years I’ve volunteered in roles with our training schools, outreaches, base-leadership, mentoring, etc. Basically anything to serve the needs of the members of a Youth With a Mission Office and the Father said “David, Prioritize”.
All these changes started to happen before we got married.
At first it was a relief, but as time went on, I struggled. I went through a bit of an identity crisis…the classic, being defined by what you do and not who you are. But as I ventured out into breaking new ground and new ministries based on some buried desires I’ve had in my heart, I found that shift happening.
When I was working with orphans, I threw myself at it. I gave everything to it, literally everything. There were no weekends, no times of rest. It was all serving, serving, serving. I’d think of how noble all the sacrifices I made and that this was what true love is.
Now I understand, all to clear, if I don’t love myself, I cannot love others. It’s impossible. “You can only give what you have.” Or the other way to say it is “You cannot give what you don’t have.”
The irony is, 3 years into marriage and loving myself, now the things I ran after in serving, serving, serving, are now coming after me to which I still do with a healthy set of love-myself boundaries.
To be able to love, one must first love oneself.
