I’ve Got “My Love” to Keep Me Warm!

 
 
 
“You don’t know all the beauty you possess inside,
You just can’t see what I see in you…
If you could see you through my eyes
You’d see someone beautiful
On the inside and outside,
So beautiful you’d know how I feel
You’d know how much you mean to me
If you could see you through my eyes.”

Kenny Lattimore, If You Could See You (Through My Eyes)

Most everyone I know suffers from “blindness” when it comes to seeing their own personal beauty. So many of us suffer from self-persecution. We’ve made so many negative judgments against ourselves that we have long been blinded to the fact that we are wonderfully made. And, unfortunately, no one can tell us how beautiful we are inside or outside, and make us believe it. We have to choose to believe in our own beauty and value before we can accept anyone else’s positive evaluation of us.

We have to look past our negative self-judgments and choose to love the REAL person that we are underneath all of those harsh judgments. The Christmas season can be a particularly hard time for those of us who suffer from poor self-love. We hear so many codependent-minded Christmas songs that link happiness at this time of the year with being loved by someone special. And as recovering codependents, we are in the process of learning that no other person can be our savior or Higher Power. No one else can make us love ourselves at Christmas or any other time. We have to choose to love ourselves better if we want to be happy.

So this year, I suggest we turn things around. For example, next time we hear a song like I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, let’s rethink it. The lyrics say “The snow is snowing, the wind is blowing but I can weather the storm… I’ve got my love to keep me warm.” The “my love” is intended to mean a person outside of ourselves. But what if we thought of it as literally “my love;” meaning self-love? Let’s make the effort to believe that we have our own self-love to keep us warm and to see us through any storm the holiday season or life in general might provide.

We can certainly weather any storm better if we can depend on ourselves. No other person can be responsible for helping us 24 hours a day. We need to be able to warm our own hearts with loving, kind words. We need to be able to give ourselves comfort with a pat on the back or a warm hug. It’s a choice we have to make if we ever want to see our own inherent beauty in the same glorious way that others see it.

With the help of my Higher Power, I’m planning on giving myself the best possible gift this Christmas—self-love. That self-love will come complete with kind words, patience, gentleness, self-compassion, healthy boundaries and any other gift that will enhance my well-being and value as a person created in the image and likeness of God.

In this way, “my love” will help me to weather any storm that family gatherings may whip-up. “My love” will also help me to have a more comfortable and enjoyable time with friends because self-love helps us all to be less self-conscious and to feel equal to others. It provides us with an extremely important sense of belonging and helps us to feel equally as beautiful as everyone else is to us.


My Christmas wish and hope is that everyone who suffers from codependency or any addictive behavior will be able to come to see and love themselves the way others do. And this isn’t about vanity. It’s about Valuing. We are all created to value the person that God has honored us to be. Choose to begin valuing, honoring and loving that very person today!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas
Read more

If The Eyes Had No Tears, The Soul Would Have No Rainbow

Image
I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles, eating my cinnamon scone and preparing to cut my trip here short. I'll have to return home tomorrow and then fly to Omaha, Nebraska for a funeral. A young father in his 30s died there last Friday, leaving behind a wife and three small children. There are always questions in these types of situations: Why? Why someone so young? Why someone who had a wife and kids? The "why" questions can be endless, and there's never a quantifiable answer.  I don't believe in "it was just his time" or that God called him home. There's too much cruelty to these pat answers and they make God seem like a beast. What purpose could there be behind such imagined acts of God? I see no redeeming purpose to seizing a young man from his young family. I do believe that life happens. When someone dies and there is no acceptable answer to "why," I believe it's simply the human condition. It's the way
Read more

Are We Projecting Our Insecurities Onto What Others Say or Do?

Image
During my Recovery, I’ve learned a great deal from Don Miguel Ruiz and his book “The Four Agreements.” Ruiz says, basically, if we live by these four standards, or agreements, we will be reasonably happy in this life: 1) Be impeccable or truthful with your words; 2) Never take anything personally. Other people’s behavior is about them, not you; 3) Never make assumptions (and I include expectations as well); and 4) Simply do your best. Learning to never take anything personally has been a life saver for me during Recovery. I used to make everything negative anyone else said or did about me. And, as a result, I made myself feel victimized or hurt, when the other person’s behavior had nothing to do with me. It was all about them and whatever difficulties they were poorly coping with at the moment. I don’t take things personally anymore. My behavior is about me and where I’m at mentally/emotionally/spiritually/physically, and other people’s behavior is theirs to own— not mine. Nev
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who can co
Read more