HOW TO LOVE YOURSELF Copyright Heide Dangelo
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I remember God spoke to us in the bible telling us to love God first before we can love ourselves and others. It was tough for me to grasp as I did not understand how that works. I thought that by loving others first, I would eventually grow into loving myself; I found out I was wrong. Self-love is a journey that we go through with God. It takes dedication, devotion, practice, realization, growth, discovery, and much more. And it all starts with God. “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life with him. This is real love— not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (1 John 4:7-13). I realized that our greatest life lesson is learning how to fully realize, accept, and love God. It will happen when we understand who we are in him. For God so loved the world that he GAVE his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) But to all who believe in him, and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or pain, but a birth that comes from God. (John 1:12-13). Once we know and love God, he shows us our value to him. Out of a heart full of gratefulness, we give our love to others without becoming resentful and depleted. As A child growing up into adulthood, I was a victim of all kinds of abuse; neglect, starved, physical, mental, verbal, and emotional by my mother, sister, stepmom, and classmates from school. However, God was always at my side assuring me that he was there and loved me when no one else did. At age 19, I left home to get away from the cycle of abuse. I had no self-esteem, no one thought I was worthy of love, so how could I love myself? I started my spiritual journey in the wrong place. I wanted to find a man who would love me for who I am, I dated many different men to find love and went to many different varieties of churches to help me find the love I longed for. I wanted human love and affirmation so badly that I believed God did show me a vision of a figure of a man whom I would marry in the future. I finally met the man whom God had shown me in the vision, and I asked God, what about love? I am not in love with him, but this is the man you showed me in the vision. God seemed to be telling me that love will come later. I later had three kids and my love grew for my kids and others however my love for my husband was still not there, I asked God again, “I worked on myself with self-help spiritual books, and still could not figure out how to love him. I still didn’t know how to love God or
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myself. Yet God seemed to say, “Don’t worry, love will come later.” I continued to go to various churches, read self-help and spiritual books, practiced words of affirmation, think about self-love, did acts of service, took action on selflove, accepting to receive gifts to absorb self-love, I spent quality time with myself, I went to workshops, seminars and more… to help myself to love him and myself, that elusive love still did not come.. I knew something needed to change until all of my kids grew up and moved out on their own, a trainer/coach, author, and speaker, I sat down with my husband informing him of my goals that I decided to pursue my dreams teaching the Law of Attraction to the Deaf communities and to become a author and speaker doing things that will make me happy, he replied: “what about me?” Since I still did not understand how God fit into the equation, I was unable to explain my heart to him. All I could tell him that he is an adult like me, and I cannot make him happy, but he can only make himself happy. My husband did not like seeing me happy doing things I like to do and started to become verbally, emotionally, and mentally abusive towards me. I became more and more depressed as he continued his ways by not feeding or watering me (spiritually). I was slowly dying. I had a heart attack from all the stress, my hormones were out of whack, I was getting sick often with fibromyalgia flare-ups, shingles flare-ups, lack of sleep, overworking, and other illness appearing. I asked God again when would love for my husband come? This time God seemed to say, “the grass is greener on the other side.” I asked, “how can I survive on my own, plus I can’t leave him because he loves me.” God seemed to say, “When there is fear, there is no love.” Shortly thereafter, my husband raised his hand as if to strike me, I ducked like I did as a child, at that moment I realized I had married my mom! There was something wrong with me because I was in fear like I had as a child. There was no love there. I decided to divorce him and he wanted to hold on to me, Then one day he texted me and asked if there any chance for us to get back together again, I said, “No. Living with you, I was slowly killing me. I was under so much stress that my health was tanking. I was not happy. I had a choice to be happy or die, I am now choosing to live and to be happy.” During the divorce, my kids were mad at me. Their father had
