Caring for Self - David's First Step in Living Beyond a Shattered Life (2 Samuel 12:20) - a podcast by David K Payne

 "Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort. " – Deborah Day 

 In our last blog, we spoke about how King David in the scriptures moved past a particularly shattered point in his life. The culmination of this series of events was the death of his son, after which David takes four very noticeable steps in his moving past this traumatic event. The first of these steps was to bathe himself. Remarkably, taking care of ourselves is one of the hardest things we will do in our lifetime. What we miss is how vital care for our self is to the process of moving past traumatic experiences. Without taking care of ourselves first, we have no chance of accomplishing the next three steps, David moved through and living beyond a shattered life.

 "Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. "– Lucille Ball

 Often in my writings and ministry, I have touched the subject of loving self. The first time I remember directly addressing this subject was at a men's retreat. I used the teaching Jesus to talk about the three great relationships in our lives; self, God; others. The text reference is in the Gospels, where Jesus reminds a man that the greatest commandment is to love God. Jesus goes on to declare that the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. The unspoken truth is this scripture is that in order to be able to love others as yourself, it is implied we must love yourself first.

 Interestingly I can still remember some questioning the wisdom of teaching people to love themselves first and seems to many to be erroneous teaching. On my view, the truth is we must take care of, love, and nurture our own lives to be able to help others. David rose from his grief and first cared for himself.

 Caring for oneself can be seen in our practices and lifestyle. To live well and specially to move past a shattered life, we must develop good personal habits regarding things that promote health. Appropriate amounts of rest, healthy eating habits, seeing a counselor, moderate exercise, and just being kind to yourself are all indicators of how we view ourselves. How we view ourselves directly impacts how we interact with the world.

 There is much more to say about the subject of caring for our self. But for today, I want to encourage those of you who are trying to move past traumatic experiences to develop an intentional habit of taking care of yourself first.

 Just Be

David

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