the plaque that ruled my life and the web that made me free

Jesus
Others
Yourself.

As a young kid I’d stare at the plaque on the wall of the Sunday School classroom. Someone must have hung it there almost absentmindedly, just another bit of Sunday School kitsch—maybe even someone who didn’t want it in their own house anymore. They couldn’t have known they’d be forming a child’s worldview for years to come.

Jesus, Others, Yourself, I’d chant growing up, and at some point I discovered it worked. I felt something like joy every time I helped someone else, took on their projects and problems; but more insidiously, I felt something like relief every time I minimized my own. I could ignore my own problems and my own feelings if I focused on others’, and I could silence the voice of judgment in my head if I never attended to my own needs. After all, by using resources to care for myself, I was taking them away from someone else, right?

So I abandoned myself to please a plaque.

---

Theology and justice work ensued. As I learned more and more about poverty, oppression, and justice, the issues became more thorny and the work more difficult; but in my most hopeless hours, I reminded myself: we are all connected. I cannot flourish until my neighbor flourishes. And I cannot see Jesus without loving my neighbor. Jesus, Yourself, Others—we exist all as one web.

Still, though that truth could carry me through my work on behalf of others, it took many years more to trust that the world is not a zero-sum game. It took time for the web to really call into question the hierarchy—to actually ask: can my neighbor flourish while I refuse to?

When, exactly, was I planning to stop neglecting myself? Who, exactly, was supposed to be responsible for my basic well-being? How, exactly, did I expect to be fully present to others when I was so practiced at avoiding myself?

And why did I think I deserved never to rest from the work of caring for others, while men in business suits took themselves on vacation to the Pacific? How can I be an advocate for people like me—women and care workers and the chronically ill—if I never advocate for myself?

You see how even my deepest self-love is pretty tough.

---

Working for justice means fighting for the intrinsic worth of every human being—including myself. That means my work isn’t the most important gift I offer the world; my self is. I don’t take time out of justice work for self-care. Self-love is justice work. Self-love is the most radical statement I know how to make; and I work for justice in hopes of empowering others to make the same statement for themselves.

Self-love is not soothing your ego or indulging your bad habits. It’s not expensive and it’s rarely dramatic. Self-love is meditation and prayer: escaping the trap of ego. Self-love is eating your vegetables and going to bed on time. It’s forgiving past selves and forgiving other people. It’s taking a rest, taking exercise, taking a breath. It’s giving space to your own intuition, your emotions, your body, your soul. It’s a phone call, a budget, a glass of water, a night full of laughter. The choice to be here for yourself.

Once I thought self-care was selfish, but that was before I discovered my self is all I can ever offer anyone else. Then, I thought I was giving of myself, but I was only letting people drain me. Gifts that came at a dear price to me so often rolled off the backs of others. And that self I thought I could give of lessened by the day, until I was handing out scraps and calling it love. But love is not a lessening.

Love overflows.

I love myself because God’s love gives me permission. I love myself because duty and despair are false friends, seductive soul-suckers, and they’re mighty poor dinner companions. I love myself because all that time people spent teaching me to fear myself, they never mentioned they were the ones afraid of me.

Because you see, once love starts to grow, it cannot be contained.

If you can actually accept all the ways you’re going to fail, all the things you’ll never do, all the Others you’ll never please, you can accept just about anybody. If you set boundaries that allow you to give your best in the places you’re truly called, you are freed from comparing your calling to anyone else’s. If you can love yourself fiercely, you can love anyone with abandon. And that’s a dangerous thing.

For every false expectation you declare you will not meet, for every condemning voice you flick off your shoulder, you gain energy from defending yourself and put it toward your actual job: becoming, and becoming love. It is your being, your shining, that gives others permission to shine out themselves.

And then you discover it is your being who wanted to love others all along—you discover caring for people is also caring for yourself. Your work is no longer scraping off bits of yourself to hand over.

Instead, the you you give is a bright and beautiful force of nature, of creation, of joy, of clear-eyed, unrelenting love.

---

P.S., if you’re looking for a simple and concrete way to try this whole thing out, I’m leading a free Facebook group to spend four weeks going through my free devotional, Making Friends with My Body and God. Once the group ends, the devotional will no longer be free—so get your copy now and join us on Facebook!