Did I unplug the iron?....

Have you ever left the house and then couldn’t remember if you shut the garage door or turned off the curling iron? I do that all the time! I’ll get to the office and then wonder if I shut lights off or even locked the door behind me as I left my apartment. Some of those things that I do so often that I do more out of instinct than memory. Hold that thought...

We all know the GOLDEN RULE is “Love your neighbor as yourself.” I grew up hearing it, as I’m sure most people did. It seems simple enough. It goes hand in hand with “Do to others as you would have them do to you” ...right?

But there’s a big assumption in that Golden Rule. What if you don’t love yourself? What if the “as yourself” part isn’t so great?

For years I struggled with guilt and shame. Of course, anything that went wrong was my fault. I was dumb enough to stay in that abusive relationship, I wasn't smart enough to reach out for help and leave when I knew things were escalating, and I was stupid enough to open the door that night... so whenever things started falling apart, it had to be my fault. No one had to say it, it was as much a part of me as the blood that ran through my veins.

It’s difficult to forgive your neighbor or love your neighbor, think ANYTHING positive about your neighbor, when you can't forgive or love yourself. I would smile and act like I was okay, but I was not okay. And what no one understood was that I just assumed anything that went wrong in any relationship (dating, friends, family, coworkers - whatever), was my fault. My heart functioned the same way my brain does when I’m leaving for the office every morning. At some level, it just got used to a routine and ran on instinct, the instinct of guilt and shame.

Even after God opened my eyes to His grace and forgiveness, I had to make a conscious decision every day to love myself, the way God loves me. I knew that God loved me and I was forgiven, but I had to retrain my heart to trust, to love with an open mind, to not automatically take the blame for everything. I had to start a new routine - to see myself through God's eyes. That is not an easy task. Thank goodness for God's grace! It took almost as many years to retrain my heart as it did to live in guilt and shame.

Even now, I catch myself sometimes, especially when life gets to be too much and the chaos is swirling around my head. I have to make a conscious decision to remember who is in control of my life and that He loves me enough to die on the cross for me.

So I pray that each of you "Love your neighbor as yourself." But more than that, I pray that you love yourself as much as our Heavenly Father loves you, because, personally, I think THAT should be the Golden Rule.

Mark 12:31 (NKJ) And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”