A Short Story About Achieving Self-Love With Jesus

Do you struggle with pleasing people? Do you try to be someone you think others want you to be? I’ve been there, done that. I continue to struggle with it to this day. I didn’t always have confidence or love for myself. I was abused, abandoned, and neglected in my childhood, so I didn’t always have the healthiest relationships to teach me self-esteem. I had very low self-worth and was depressed for many years. My very low self-esteem gave me the desire to want to please people.

I overcompensated my self-hatred by caring about others more than myself to make them think I was worthy. I did everything for everybody else and gave things away. I didn’t believe I was worthy who deserved to have self-love. I gave away so much of myself, my time, and what I had.

One day in 2021, I decided enough was enough. That day, I started to work hard to build my self-esteem. I wasn’t going to let people keep using me, and I sure wasn’t going to allow my thoughts about myself to be negative anymore. I was done being a people pleaser and wanted to learn what self-love was and how to have that.

I still learn new things about myself, and I still practice self-love every day. When a hidden wound I didn’t know was there starts hurting again, I must work on understanding where the hurt originates. I need to heal it instead of ignoring it and letting the pain return throughout my life. I grew up learning a lot of wrongful beliefs, and I continue to relearn the truth.

I am grateful I have built my self-esteem and love how God created me. I now understand who I am and what makes me unique. And that’s special. It was a long process, but I did it with Jesus. Since I experienced complete brokenness from having no self-love to loving who God created me to be, I want you to know that I believe in you to have the self-love you deserve. And the love that Jesus wants you to have. So please, choose to build your self-esteem and get self-love. It’s so worth it in the end.

Jesus wants us to have self-love so we can love others well. I used to believe that having self-love was a sin and that it meant you were prideful. I thought Christians weren’t allowed to love themselves. The kind of self-love I am writing about in this short story is the biblical kind of self-love that God desires each of us to have. If you believe the lie Satan told you that Christians are not allowed to love themselves, please listen to me. I used to believe that lie too.

People who have self-love can provide love to everyone else in a greater capacity. You need to know your value and worth to love others the way God wants you to love them. Being prideful is choosing not to care about others but focusing so much on yourself. Having self-love allows you to better love and serve others. You are doing them a favor by loving yourself first so you can love them even more.

In my self-love journey, I journaled my positive qualities and goals, stated affirmations, and wrote lists of why I’m grateful. I started believing in who God says I am by asking God to help me, listening to Christian Motivational videos on YouTube, reading books, and caring for my health. All forms of health - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. These are just some of what I’ve done, but it gives you ideas for how to begin your self-love journey.

God created every one of us so differently. Your gift to him is being who God created you to be in the world and not hiding the person that you are. Nobody is more important than anybody else in his eyes. God says you are important. You're perfect. You are valuable. You're worthy, and you are loved.

At the beginning of my self-love journey, I didn’t believe these truths. But I really wanted to believe it, so I kept saying these affirmations (and a whole bunch more) to myself, and eventually, they became believable. If they seem uncomfortable at first, keep stating them, and you’ll start to believe them. Don’t give up believing in yourself when the devil tries to stop you from God’s will. God wants you to know your worth. The devil will tempt you to give up on believing in yourself. Don’t let him take that away from you.

But none of this would've been possible without my best friend, Jesus Christ, by my side to cheer me on helping me to love myself. My praise all goes to you, Jesus. He made me worthy and a wonderful person. I know this to be true. But it took a lot of work to believe. I believe in you to gain the self-love Jesus wants you to have too. Jesus wants all of us to have self-love, and that includes you.

One quality I love about myself is my quirky sense of humor. Thank you, God, for making me a weirdie, as I like to call myself. My personal definition of a weirdie person is they do such weird things you will never meet somebody like them in your life. And that describes me quite well!

Wow! Am I glad not to know another person running around the world just like me? They would have too much of my silliness. In a way, the world does need more humor. But I am glad we have you in the world to help everyone by being yourself, and please choose self-love to give others the love that God created you specifically to provide in this world.