In church today I felt like I should write down impressions I received as I listened to the talks and the lessons. I wrote quite a bit about desires and goals and things to work on. But one thing stood out to me, especially in light of my blog entry yesterday. Just follow my random ramblings here for a moment...please :).
Women...we tend to be difficult creatures. And I am as confusing to myself as I am sure I must be to the opposite sex. Let me explain why.
There are areas in my life where I feel confident. But that doesn't seem to matter, at least to my sense of self worth. For example, I'm a good student. I'm intelligent, and I understand things with relative ease. I was a good teacher, actually. And I felt at ease doing that. It came very naturally to me. So it would seem that I have things to build my sense of self worth.
But somehow, and I don't understand it but I think it has something to do with my feminine nature, my self-esteem is not what it should be. Why? Because when it comes to my body, I'm not very kind to myself. I criticize my pores, or my moles, or I dwell on my weight and how tone various parts of my body are. Or are not, as it were. At times, it consumes me. And I find that I forget the good things. I forget that I'm a good writer or that I have pretty eyes and good cheek-bones.
A lot of people may think I'm confident because I put up a pretty good facade. Inside I'm sort of a bumbling mess.
Once, when I was very young, maybe eight or ten, I was with my family in California. My Aunt Cindee was driving a van full of children when her daughter, my cousin Tara, said, "Mommy, I love myself." I remember being a bit appalled by such a brazen statement. But my Aunt Cindee replied with this, "That's good. Because if you don't love yourself, no one else will." I was further shocked by my aunt's reply. Really, I don't think at that age I had any sense of my worth at all. I thought it was perhaps prideful to love yourself like that and then just to say it out loud...well! How shocking and vain. And then her mother validated it. Oh boy was I confused.
So let me be honest. I've always sort of thought that idea of loving yourself being a prerequisite to others loving you was a load of garbage.
Newsflash... It isn't. (I sort of hate it when trite sentiment is true. It goes against my interior emo/goth rebel!) It turns out, in fact, to be true. I think if you don't love yourself, it is difficult to truly love others. And it is even more difficult to believe that you deserve a good and happy life.
But what is even more disturbing about that story? That even when I was young, I struggled to see my worth. Most children have an innate sense of their worth, don't they? Like, you see kids smiling when they see their reflection in a mirror. I've watched little toddlers dance around in a mirror, happy and pleased with what they see. I don't know if I was ever like that, but eight or ten is pretty young to be questioning whether you should love yourself or if loving yourself meant you had an overblown ego. Right?
Anyway, all this brought me around to thinking about how my self-esteem as it might relate to my lack of time management. I have to get to work. No ifs, ands or buts. I HAVE TO!!! I think that getting to work would assuage some of my self-esteem issues, too. Don't you always feel better after giving something a good effort, the best you've got? I do.
But I think I also need to start loving me. I need to love me no matter if I need to work at being healthier. Or if my pores are big. Or if I have moles on my skin. I need to love me even if I don't have a job. And I need to see myself as worth the effort it takes to find work, to improve my health, to write and to organize my time.
In other words, I need to believe that I am worth it. That I am worth planning out my day. That I am worth success. That I am worth taking care of. Because I don't think I've believed that. Not for a long time. I don't remember the last time I felt really good in my skin.
There is a difference between having an unhealthy ego and self-confidence. Besides, who am I? Who are any of us? We are children of God, that's who, and there is so much more to us then we comprehend. He loves us. He sent His Son to atone for our sins, so we must be worth something to Him. Because who would sacrifice a beloved son otherwise?
It always comes back to that: to the atonement and to the love that Christ has and to the love that God has. Each of us was worth it. I am worth it. God would not want me to have anything less than a happy, productive, good life. The atonement is the ultimate gift and the ultimate proof of that truth. So I do need to manage my time...but I need also to see that I am worth the effort it takes so that I can achieve success.
Not sure if that made any sense to anyone but me. Oh well. I needed a sounding board, anyway!
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