More Love

I've been thinking a lot about what makes us all so hard on ourselves.  Especially as a Mormon gal, I have seen so many of my friends, including myself, go completely crazy and feel like terrible people over something silly.  I do this ALL THE TIME, though I very rarely will show it or talk about it.  I was talking to my internship supervisor and she said this: "This is your head. This is your heart.  It is a VERY VERY long journey from your head to your heart, but for some reason when something hits your heart it is INSTANTLY picking at your head."  The truth of this stuck with me.  I can try my very best to logic my way out of feeling things, but it never works.  The messenger just never seems to make it to my heart to deliver the message that my brain is the one making sense here.  Then, the second something gets in there and changes how I feel or I get that little pin prick of paranoia or anxiety or pain straight to the heart...BOOM there goes my head a mile a minute thinking of all the horrible things I can possibly think about myself.  I can only assume that the messenger from my brain is morbidly obese and riding a midget, while the messenger from my heart is 4 feet, 80 pounds, and riding a cheetah.  I am a horrible person to myself sometimes, as if I WANT to make myself feel horrible, as if I think I deserve it...and I know that I am not alone in this unexplainable weirdness.

During church on Sunday I got these thoughts, and they had nothing to do with what was being said, so i payed attention to the lesson I was being taught.  Think about the person you love more than anything. Got it?  Now think about how you want them to be awesome, how much potential they have, the dreams you have of them being happy and full of life and eventually being perfect.  Now...think of how much it hurts you, and maybe even angers you when someone else comes along and talks trash on them, or makes them feel bad about themselves.  Think of a time when that person you love more than anything allowed someone to get into their head and bring them down to their lowest points.  Feel that? Feel how much that SUCKS?  I can only imagine what our Heavenly Father and Elder Brother feel when we bring ourselves down.  Can you imagine how sad they are when we spend days upon days trashing ourselves, telling ourselves we aren't important, or saying that we'll never be anything greater than this?  It must hurt them infinitely more because they know EXACTLY how amazing and divine we are, EXACTLY what our potential is and EXACTLY what we are capable of if we just let ourselves BE that amazing person without dragging around all that baggage that just doesn't matter.

So I am making this commitment to myself, and its real since it is in writing. I am going to love myself regardless of what my own heart/head tries to tell me, and let other people (including divine people) love me.  If my Heavenly Father loves me as much as he does in my imperfect state (which I know he does, just like I know he loves ALL of us) why would I throw that love back in his face and say "No, I don't want that from you, and I don't believe you when you say I'm worth it" when all he wants to do is love me infinitely, more than anyone on this Earth can.  Isn't that really all we all need in order to keep going sometimes, more love?