What I Needed to End Misery, Drop 100 lbs, and Renew My Spirit

Have you ever found it difficult to prioritize taking time out of your hectic day to focus on taking care of your wellbeing?

I know that I have. Prioritizing my wellness, whether it was my mental health, physical health, or spiritual health, was always very difficult for me especially as a mom of 3 small kids with a full-time job that required a lot of travel monthly. I never felt like I had the time to work out, prep food, or set aside time to pray or dive into God’s word.

·  If I take an hour out of my day to work out, I’m not spending that free time with my family and that makes me a bad mom and wife

·  If I take time to pray or spend time with God in the morning, I won’t be starting work on time, and I could lose my job

·  There’s no way I can fit working out, de-stressing, or praying into my travel days and I travel constantly

These were the thoughts that I had non-stop whenever the idea of working out or taking time out to care for myself spiritually or mentally popped into my head.

Have you ever had those thoughts run through your mind, or at least something similar?

I always had these feelings of guilt, if I took time away from spending quality time with my family, I was a bad mother and a bad wife. The problem was, I already felt like both of those things because I was so physically and spiritually unwell that the time, I was spending with them, wasn’t really spent with them. I was there but not interacting with them because I couldn’t physically do the things they wanted to do, or I was so exhausted that I was always crabby or short with them.

Shifting your mindset so that you prioritize taking care of your wellbeing is an easy thing to say, in fact, you probably hear people talk about it all the time. The reality of actually doing it is extremely difficult to do in practice, especially if you are already in a place where you feel constantly stressed out, have a full-time job or multiple jobs, and have others that you need to help take care of in your life.

In this article, I’m going to help you understand the Biblical principles behind why you need to prioritize caring for and loving yourself and why it’s critical if you want to fully love and care for others. 

Roughly 6 years ago, I had decided to re-start my health journey. I was 100 pounds overweight, depressed, had zero relationship with God, and was in a constant state of stress with work, my kids, and my husband. I was really in a miserable, dark place physically, mentally, and spiritually.

I learned about the massive benefits of strength training over cardio, which I hated, and also about the hugely detrimental impact of sugar and processed carbohydrate consumption so I decided to give lifting weights a try and cut out all the crappy carbs I was eating.

For the first time in well over a decade, I started to see physical results from making those changes. The problem was, I was still really miserable and honestly, really kind of miserable to be around. I still felt guilty about taking time away from my family to work out because I was already missing out on spending time with them because of my focus on work.

I started working out at night after they went to bed but then I felt guilty about missing out on spending time with my husband.

I felt lost and still so unhappy, but what I didn’t really grasp at the time was that those feelings were being driven by the fact that I was doing things for the wrong reasons. I was trying to change so that I could change the opinions I thought other people had of me and I thought chasing a number on the scale would make me a better person.

In 2017, I met 2 people that would really change my life. They were 2 Christian counselors that helped me start to see who I was through God’s eyes.

I really didn’t have a relationship with God when I met them. I figured I had spent so much time running from Him, I couldn’t have a relationship with Him so why even try now.

Something that they emphasized over and over with me was a command from God, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Have you ever heard that particular commandment before? Even without a relationship with God, I knew I had. Repeatedly.

The thing was, I had never really understood it the way that they were explaining it to me.

It had always been drilled into me, you have to focus on others first. Put others first, taking care of yourself is selfish. Even when I was in the military, the order of priority was, “Ship, Shipmate, self”. I was always last.

What they told me was something I honestly had never heard before, at least not that I could remember. What they emphasized was the last part of that command, the part that states, “…as yourself”.

What they taught me was that throughout the Bible, God is commanding each of us to love ourselves so that we can actually love and care for others.

My entire life, I had somehow missed this piece of the story. The truth is until you love yourself the way that God loves you, you can’t ever really love and care for others.

God loves each and every one of us so much, that he sacrificed His only son to save my soul. That’s how much I am loved and cared for, that’s how much each and every one of us is loved and cared for.

Remember earlier when I said I was doing things for the wrong reason?

I always thought people were judging me even if they never actually said anything to me. In reality, I was judging myself because, in my heart, I didn’t love myself. I loathed myself and that loathing impacted every single interaction I had with everyone around me, my kids, my husband, my family, and friends.

I projected the negative thoughts that I had about myself into everything that was said to me, regardless of intent or even the actual words used.

Those 2 Christian counselors helped me to see how I was missing the point. They showed me that I needed to see myself the way that God saw me. As someone so precious and valuable, He sacrificed His only child in order to save me.

Once I accepted that fact and asked my husband for help on how to start the process of talking to God in prayer, it all kind of clicked for me.

I was not a failure or worthless even though I had messed up in life more times than I can ever count. Me losing weight was never going to change the way God saw me or how much he loved me.

What could change, something that I could control, was how I could demonstrate my love for God by prioritizing my health in body, mind, and spirit, getting healthy, and doing the work that He created me to do.

Here’s the Key

By loving myself and seeing my worth the way God saw me meant I could give myself 100% guilt-free permission to spend time making myself better — so that I could care for others, and thus– truly love my neighbors as myself. Amen to that!

Here are some quick, simple tips for you to start the process of prioritizing yourself first:

Simple doesn’t mean easy but taking these first few steps should help you start your journey of caring for yourself spiritually, physically, and mentally.

1.  Plan your day the evening before and ask for help to make sure you can complete the following steps.

2.   Build in time to pray and dive into God’s word first as a part of your plan. It doesn’t have to be long, even 15-20 minutes of time with just you and God is a good place to start

3.   Identify your quiet spot to be with God ahead of time and share that with your family so they know your plan as well.

4.   Build in time to work out, the earlier in the day the better. Again, it doesn’t have to be long 20-30 minutes, 3-4 times a week is sufficient.

5.  Plan to spend 10-20 minutes outside in the sunlight without sunglasses or sunscreen. This can coincide with your planned workout time or be a different block of time. Sun exposure to your skin produces vitamin D3, which is critical to immune health.

6.  Share your plan with your loved ones. They will appreciate being looped into your plans and it allows you the opportunity to bring them into your “whys” for focusing on creating these times for yourself.

You are important and truly loved by God and others.

Caring for and loving yourself so that you can care for and love those around you helps you fulfill your God-given purpose.

The healthier you are in every aspect of your life, the better you make the world and those around you. (And conversely, if you don’t take care of yourself, you’ll burn out and be of no use to anyone.)