a blessing for when you can’t love yourself

God, I don’t love myself, so how can anyone else?

Blessed are we who say, God, maybe I can borrow some of Your mercy, as I unfold to You the unloveliness within.

Maybe as I hand it all over, I can borrow some of Your gentleness and grace to use for myself, to help me absorb some of the love You have for me, to metabolize it, so I can breathe freely in my own company.

Oh how blessed is the realization that You call me the beloved, and chose to live with me on purpose.

We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
1 John 4:16

inhaling this truth gives life to everything else.

May you set aside straining toward perfection in the abstract, and live simply in Christ.