Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality closer to the heart’s desire. ~ John Dewey
Imagine that the inserted image represents an older you sharing stories with, laughing with, delighting in, and loving the you of today. Can you imagine?
Many of us have a difficult time truly believing someone—anyone—takes delight in us. Looking into our eyes and knowing everything about us and still taking delight in us.
Saying, “I love you” is a powerful gift. I tell several people this every day. Many psychologists recommend we look ourselves in the mirror every day and speak the same words to ourselves. This is a lovely thing…yet I’m beginning to think that we have such a limited understanding of what “love” is that it might penetrate some secret barrier to, instead, tell ourselves and others, “I delight in you.”.
I recently spoke those words to someone, and they laughed saying a bit mockingly, “Delight?” as if I’d used a foreign word. Maybe that’s part of its power…it has not been corrupted and contorted like the word “love” has in our modern-day usage.
As I continue my exploration of “true love”, which I wrote of in Monday’s blog, something different bubbled up through my journaling. Each morning, I reflect upon where, throughout the previous, day I’d struggled, failed, and succeeded in offering “true love” to the one who I chose to focus on. I call to mind Romans 13:8, where we’re told that we have fulfilled the law (of Jesus found in Mark 12) by loving just one.
A couple of days ago, I set my journaling aside for a moment to search scripture once again. I read the Bible daily and have read it many times over. I admit, however, that it is hard for me to read books like Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Something led me back to Leviticus, and there I found a surprise. In chapter 19 verse 18 it commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself”. I’d always assumed Jesus was the first to teach this, but there in Leviticus of all places it’s laid out in the Old Testament!
To that point in my week of focusing on the meaning of “true love” all my efforts had been focused upon the “other”. That morning, Leviticus and Mark both brought home the fact that I can only love another to the extent that I truly love myself. That’s hard work.
Can I go so far as to delight in myself? Psalm 18:19 says “…he brought me forth into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me…” So who am I to condemn myself when the creator of everything from Jupiter to the dust mites under my bed delights in me? I suppose I am somewhere in between our universe’s largest planet and the dust mites.
We may feel silly—even inauthentic—when we first gaze into a mirror stating, “I delight in myself.” It may help to add, “because the creator of everything that is delights in me.”. Regardless, if we persist, truth will prevail and we can heal and mature into seeing ourselves as God does.
It would be delightful to hear from those of you who gaze into your own eyes in the mirror and dare to let the delight seep in.
If you need support, encouragement, and affirmation along this growing journey, please visit this link: https://kimberlyhighland.com/private-session/
Love, your sister along the journey,
k
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