Tamara K. Anderson expounds on the one thing the world needs in today's world, why it's important, and how to problem solve getting it in our lives.
Welcome to another episode of Tamara's Takeaways. I'm your host Tamara K. Anderson, and I am so excited to be talking to you today and sharing with you a few of the things that I gleaned from Wendy Andersen's podcast last week.
Wendy has a son, Dexter, who was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis as a young child. She explains her life changed within 36 hours from something that was normal and expected to where she had to redefine what normal looked like for her family. Wendy and her husband had to make a choice. They were either going to take this diagnosis lying down and despair over what could have been, or they could rise up and do everything in their power to help Dexter get the best help available. And so, even though they were sad, they chose to see the good. And that is a powerful, powerful message.
One of the things Wendy talked about was the idea to love your life. In fact, she talked about that it's important to love your life, embrace and redefine. And I loved those three key concepts that she taught.
In this month of February, I think one of the most important concepts we can talk about is learning to love ourselves and our life.
We often talk during February about love with other people. But I want to share with you a couple of verses in the New Testament that you have probably read, but maybe never thought of in this way. These verses can be found in Matthew 22:37-39. And this is Jesus's answer when a lawyer asks which of the commandments was the greatest.
"Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all the mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
Notice that last part of the verse--we need to love our neighbor as ourselves.
So often I think we forget that God not only wants us to love him, but he also wants us to love ourselves.
Do we do we love ourselves?
The interesting correlation I'd need to point out with this scripture is "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It's almost like there's a correlation between how much love we have for ourselves and how much love we can show to our neighbors. And I think it's directly connected to how much we love God.
If we love God and ourselves a whole bunch, then our capacity to love our neighbor is amazing, fantastic, and great. If we don't love ourselves, then it, it's not.
And so my question to you this Valentine's day time of the year is, what can you do to learn to love yourself and love your life more than you do now?
Because you're going to have an instance where you have a day (or a 36-hour period like Wendy), where your world is going to tilt on its axis and forever change. For Wendy, it was when Dexter was diagnosed with tuberous sclerosis. For me it was when my son Nathan was diagnosed with autism. My world changed. For some it's another diagnosis like cancer. Or perhaps it is the sudden death of a loved one or abuse which causes their world to completely change.
And all of a sudden they don't feel worthy of love and they don't love themselves. I think this is one of the saddest things.
We need more love in the world today and it needs to start right in our own soul, right in our own home. We need to learn to love ourselves.
How do you learn to love yourself?
