for the last two months i have been quiet on here,
as i spent my days recovering from surgery.

during recovery i had a lot of time in my own thoughts:

time to untangle the chaos that is inside of me.
the interconnected and forever knotting threads of thought.
that not only tangle, but threaten to strangle me.

i often get so lost and confused
in my own head that
sometimes that i forget things.

i am selfish, that is the reality.

i am introspective, i prefer solitude to company.
to feel rejuvenated i need my own thoughts over conversations.
i am self-serving in my time, my energy, my desire.

but not all of me is captive to me.

there are parts that serve and preserve empathy and compassion,
where love overwhelms, where there is a greater sense of Other.

there are times where my desires are replaced with a greater desire:
to serve, to sacrifice, to give, to love upon another.

of course, there is forever the risk, the threat, the overwhelm:
of Self taking the stage, Self taking control, Self serving only Self.

but is Self the enemy? does Self truly need to be suppressed in order to love?
or is there a reason we have each been given a Self to steward?

we are all selfish, to some degree or another.

so how do we find in ourselves, in our Self, a greater sense of Other?
how do we learn to love our neighbour, as our Self?
how do our desires become for sacrifice, for service, not for Self?

during my many days, weeks, months of recovery
i have been reflecting on this notion of Self.

what sparked this thought spiral was not only my introspection
or the need to regain self-sufficiency as a part of my recovery.
there was another trigger, a deeper wounding needing addressing:

the wound to Self

last year when i departed my twenties, i started to desire a healthy relationship to Self.
but in order to achieve this, i had to wrestle with the damage caused by wounds to Self.

our deepest wounds often come from words spoken to us.

words are powerful, with the ability to cut us deep,
to pierce our hearts, wounding us.

words spoken to us can inform our view of Self.

and for me, being repeatedly called “selfish” in my life
has been extremely harmful and damaging to my Self.

this label became formative in my identity and perception of Self,
because it was spoken during my childhood and adolescence.

my behaviour at the time, due to my eating disorder, had been self-destructive;
this was selfish, in that it harmed those who loved me, while also harming myself.

i am not here to defend myself, or to suggest that my actions were not selfish.
i am not ashamed to acknowledge my own tendency towards selfishness.

the point of raising this label is to highlight how our words can lead to wounding.

how we respond to the words of others is a choice. sometimes, the words may be
a loving rebuke or correction. sometimes, the words may wake us up, and cause us
to reflect, to question, and sometimes we can end up questioning our own reality.

that is a scary place to be, to question your very existence and perception of existing.

words are powerful, and so it is important to speak wisely to another soul, another heart.
especially if our words call into question their very being, or relationship to Self.

for me, the label of selfish caused a deep wound to my sense of Self.

and wounds must be sealed in order to be healed,
because only sealed wounds can produce scars.
and scars produce stories, and stories are for sharing.

our wounds, when allowed to remain, to fester, can cause us, and others, harm.
but our wounds, once sealed and healed into scars, can be powerful testimonies.

i believe that our wounds, our scars, our stories are never just about us;
we are merely the vessels that God uses to reveal himself to others.

healing is a deep work that God loves to perform in us;
He delights in restoring us, sealing our wounds,
redeeming our memories, our experiences, our pain,
speaking His love and power and life into ours.

deep childhood woundings and healing within teach us
something of God, of His nature, His ways, His patterns;
for He operates not only in the seen, but unseen.

He cares about the details, the etchings of our hearts.
He cares about our wholeheartedness, all parts of our selves.
He cares about our maturity, growth, and development.
He cares about our brokenness, our pain, our hurts.

in the same way as God operates in the unseen,
words are also weapons in the unseen.

the wounds of words are not physical;
but spiritual, emotional, psychological.

words can leave us damaged, distorted;
if we choose to believe them.

Fear and Shame also operate in the unseen,
and words used against us can be seeds
that plant deep roots of insecurity in us.

Fear and Shame condition us to operate from
a place of insecurity in Self, rather than security.

insecurity loves to feed our ego, and
Fear and Shame try to protect our Self by
adopting Personas that we can hide behind.

we can only have a secure sense of Self
when we know Whose we are and who we are,
filled with the knowledge of God’s Love and Grace
instead of being filled with Fear and Shame.

this is the spiritual, supernatural layer to our reality;
we may not see the battle for our mind, our thoughts
but there will be evidence in our relationship to Self.

Dr Alison Cook speaks to how Selfhood, our understanding of Self,
is paramount to how we confront our wounds and trauma.

for me, a label of selfishness meant i directly associated my Self
to being negative, to being “bad”, to being in opposition to God.

for you, there may be other woundings that have occurred
to your sense of Self over the years; whether you have been
accused, questioned, misunderstood, suppressed, exhausted
and burnt out by the weight of expectations on your Self.

Dr Cook says there are many reasons why we may not
develop a strong sense of Self, because we do not develop
this Self in a vacuum, but in relationship with others.

if those around us fail us, and if we do not receive a validation
of Self as a child, in a healthy context where we are seen, and
where our true Self is encouraged, then we may fail to have a
confidence in our strengths and weaknesses as we grow older.

losing the Self

if we lack a strong sense of Self, or possess any wounds
that have impacted our relationship to our Self,
there can be consequences in our actions and response.

there is a spectrum of Self, that ranges from selfish to selfless;
selfish doesn’t care about Other, while selfless doesn’t care for Self.

for me, the label of selfish in my teenage years led me to the
complete abandonment of my Self throughout my twenties.

for so long i believed the lie that true acts of love have no Self;
that i must deny and suppress my Self, if i am to love and serve others well.

i was an advocate for Selflessness, denial of Self, Self-forgetfulness;
i strove for humility, meekness, and a servant heart.

while these are not wrong, and are biblical principles to apply to Self,
i was using these as bandaid solutions for the wound to my Self.

during this season of recovery, i have been forced to reflect on how true it is,
that we cannot fill another’s heart with something from within our own heart
if we have nothing to give, nothing to offer, and if we have emptied our Self.

if i denied my Self, forgot myself, or tried to be selfless in this season of recovery,
i would not be able to love and serve others well, because my Self needed help
to repair, to rebuild, to be restored to health. i could not deny my Self recovery.

the danger of some Christian thought, that misapplies Jesus’ words to deny Self,
is the championing of Selflessness to the point of disassociation. if we are not
careful we can experience a disembodiment, dismemberment from our sense of Self.

Dr Cook mentions this, when she speaks to how misconstrued childhood wounds,
alongside church messaging of denial of self, can combine to create an unhealthy pattern
of response when it comes to Self. she shares her own story, where she absorbed messages
from the church that she used to attend to her Self, namely, that growing spiritually required
her to lay down and deny her Self, to set aside her own gifts, to label anything from Self as “bad”.

she assumed that following God meant obliterating any sense of “i”;
when in reality, following God should mean we become our truest Self.

she champions this notion of discovering our true selves with God,
and not being afraid to question what it means to be a Self,
and that it is not incompatible with loving God and loving others.

if we live our lives trying to lose our Self to an unhealthy extreme in the name of Christlikeness,
this will not glorify God. it will only lead to burnout, loneliness, anxiety and unhealed woundings.

the danger with losing and denying our Self is that we can start people-pleasing, start creating
a Persona that requires us to conform our “Self” into the version of Self that others demand.

to give you an example of this unhealthy extreme of selflessness and losing Self:

in the past, if someone communicated their needs to me “hey can you do X, please”,
i read that as a criticism towards me, and suffered with feeling like a failure, because
my people-pleasing-dependant Persona was deprived of what it needed to feel secure.

but this was an unhealthy attachment to needing to meet the needs of others. i believed that
others communicating their needs to me was a failure on my part, because i had not perceived
or met their needs to begin with. i would feel Guilt for not knowing what they needed
intuitively, and would then feel Shame about disappointing them, for letting them down.

do you see how horrible, how unhealthy of an existence this was??

of course, i had been completely neglecting and ignoring my own needs in those situation, and was
unable to identify my own needs, because i was so hyper-fixated on meeting the needs of Other. this
is a dangerous territory, because we can end up compromising on boundaries, and not stewarding
what God has entrusted to us to steward. if someone even remotely suggested or communicated
a boundary to me, i would once again feel like a failure for not respecting or understanding their needs.

but boundaries are healthy. wants and needs are healthy. these are not inherently wrong.
but these can be abused. Other’s can push our boundaries, or put their wants and needs onto us.
selfishness loves to distort wants and needs, to promote Self over all else, over Other.

because i believed my Self to be bad, i had based my entire identity and Self-worth on meeting
the needs of Other, on being Self-denying. i had failed to honour the wants and needs that God had
created me with, the desires and dreams He had given me, the gifts He was entrusting to me to steward.

i locked away my Self in the back of the closet, and wrongly believed that God wanted me to adopt
the Persona version of myself, because it was the more “selfless”, humble thing to do, to squander the Self.

i acted as as though my entire role on this earth was to bow before the needs of others,
and so i would overcompensate in order to meet the needs of Other above my own.

this is the devastating damage of a people-pleasing Persona.

“without selfhood, your decisions are driven by guilt and fear. you become a people pleaser.
you prioritise the opinions of others, instead of honouring your own authentic wants and needs.
you don’t show up as the best of who you are, or live out of the best of who God created you to be.”

– Dr Alison Cook

insecurity can lead us to find an identity in people-pleasing, in Other;
rather than finding security in the identity we have been given in Christ.

so how do we move towards a healthy relationship to Self,
how do we avoid sitting on either extreme of the spectrum of Self?

stewarding Self

when i lived from an unhealthy extreme of Selflessness,
i denied myself in the name of Christ, but failed to understand
how Christ modelled the strength of knowing His identity as Beloved Son.

but i know now that there needs to be a strong
sense of Self in order to live and love from the Self.

i cannot disembody my Self; i cannot deny my Self.

without an awareness of my own desires and identity,
how could i honour God? how could i give Him my Self?

this is the call of nephesh, to be the embodied version of the Self;
Self-aware in order to be intentional in how we sacrificially give of Self.

for Christ gives us a directional invitation when He calls us
to take up our own cross, deny our Self, and follow Him:

“then Jesus said to His disciples, if anyone desires to be My disciple,
let him deny himself [disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself and
his own interests] and take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly
to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also].”

[matthew 16:24]

when we look to the Cross, we see the ultimate act
of surrendering, of sacrificing the Self for the sake of Other.

when Jesus asks us to do the same, it is important
to understand what we have been called to steward.

Jesus calls us to leave everything behind,
anything that our Self has attached itself to.

He invites us to conform our Self to Him;
for our Self to be cruciform in nature.

in order to do so, he asks us to renounce all we have [luke 14:33]:

“if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own
father and mother and wife and children and brothers
and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be
my disciple. whoever does not bear his own cross
and come after me cannot be my disciple.” [26-27]

in ancient language, hate was not anger or dislike, but
a reflection on the heart’s priorities and affections.

today, hating someone means not loving them at all.
but back then, hating someone was just loving someone less.

with this context in mind, Jesus is not asking us to hate Other
(He very clearly commands us to love Others as our Self);
instead, He wants us to attach our Self to Him, and for Him to be
the first priority, the first affection, the first Love in our heart.

these verses prompt us to ask our Self:

what am i attached to?
what has become my identity? is it a job, status, relationships?
what do i care most about?
what occupies most of my attention? or my time, my energy, my money, etc.?

what Jesus is implying, is that we are not to attach our Self to the things
of this world, to material possessions or physical needs, or to find security,
acceptance, and belonging anywhere but Him. He does not want us to be
divided in our affection and attention. He wants our full devotion, our full Self.

we are called to deny our Self, for His sake.
we are to lose our Self, in order to be found in Him.
we are to deny Self-interest, in order to love and serve Him (His interest).

the practice of Self-denial is the practice of detaching our Self
from anything and everything that leads us to forget our true Love.

.

Timothy Keller says that the antithesis of Self-fullness is Self-forgetfulness;
the distinction is: we do not think less of our Self, but think of our Self less.

there are different activities in each of our days
that are conducive to this Self-forgetfulness.

i lose my sense of Self and sense of time, for example
when i am writing or reading or making art;
i lose my awareness, caught up in the act of creating.

and that is me serving God, stewarding the gifts He has given me,
enjoying and delighting in how He has made me,
as someone who loves to immerse herself in creative beauty.

but for others, there may be different facets of Self forgetfulness;
some lose themselves in singing, playing a sport, the list goes on.

take notice of these moments, where you are more likely
to be Self-forgetful in nature, where you feel no resistance
in giving of your time, your money, your energy, your talents.

take notice of these moments, because they may reveal your
God-given Self, what you have been entrusted to steward.

take notice of these moments, when you feel more willing and able
to give of yourself for the sake of Other without complaint or restraint,
and with organic, natural desire and inclination from within.

these moments of Self-forgetfulness
are moments where we are most able
to find delight and delight in God.

these moments are opportunities for us to steward our Self;
to immerse our Self in our God-given talents and abilities,
to offer to the world what God has entrusted to us to give.

God has made us all so unique, and by design, with intention.

if we diminish the way He has made us, we may not be reflecting
His image in the way He intended and created us to! that’s not to say
He won’t still use us, and glorify Himself in our lives. it’s more to say
that if we do not live authentic to who He has made us to be, then we
will be living in tension with our desires, and end up suppressing or
burying the longings of our heart – longings which He placed there!! 

Dr Cook says “becoming your self, the you that God made you
to be, is a process of learning to pay attention to what matters
most to you. it starts by paying attention to your convictions.”

He has allowed us, and given us, these natural
abilities and inclinations towards serving Other.

it is true that we may misuse, and abuse our God-given Self
when we use our abilities and inclinations for Self.

it is true that just because something does not come naturally,
that we may not be called to serve or love Other through that action.

it is important, if we long to have that healthy relationship to Self, and
healthy relationships with Other, to pay attention to the way God has made us.

.

we are all selfish in different ways.
we all struggle with the sin of selfishness
to some degree in our lives.

but there may be different
manifestations of selfishness.

what selfish looks for one person,
may be selfless for the next, and vice versa.

there is no cookie-cutter template for us to follow when it
comes to avoiding selfishness and embracing selflessness.

selfhood is so unique, so custom to how
God has designed and wired each of us.

discovering our true Self in light of God is understanding
that we all, in different capacities, in different ways,
contribute to the body of Christ, each forming one body;
despite being of many members, we become embodied
as the church, as the bride of Christ, as His beloved.

this is an identity, this is a sense of Self to find strength in:
just as Jesus found his strength and identity in being a beloved Son,
we find our strength and identity in being Christ’s beloved.

we were bought at a price, and Christ offered His body in death,
that we might receive His life, as co-heirs in Christ of eternal life,
that we might be brothers and sisters in Christ, members of one body.

our Self is adopted, loved, chosen, seen, known, pursued, desired.
God invites us into ultimate acceptance and belonging in His family.

and Jesus tells us, that our Father’s house has many rooms! [john 14:2]

it would be selfish to want the whole house to our Self,
to not want to share this belonging, this acceptance with Other.

but those who have been transformed by this new identity in Christ,
are compelled to tell others of this belonging, this adoption,
to share the good news of our eternal home and hope.

this is how we steward the Self, and have a healthy relationship
with Self. we hold in tandem the knowledge that we are loved
and chosen by a Holy God, that our Self is sacred to Him, wanted
and needed by Him to be His hands and feet on this earth;
while also holding the knowledge that we are called to share
this love with Others, and that we are not alone, but called to
share this mission, this adoption, with brothers and sisters in Christ.

we acknowledge the role our Self has in God’s family, while
honouring, serving, loving, encouraging, the role of Other.

that is why we are called to steward Love [mark 12:30-31]:

“love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind and with all your strength.’ the second is this: ‘love your
neighbor as yourself.’ there is no commandment greater than these.”

discovering our true Self in God compels us to steward that Self,
and as Jesus commands, to steward Love toward Other.

stewarding Love + serving Other

God knows our tendency to be Self-seeking. we see it in God’s people
throughout the Scriptures, man-made plans rising up against God’s.

but God’s plan and purpose for our lives is so much greater than Self,
and He is kind and patient towards us, desiring us to seek and find Him,
that we may ultimately seek first His kingdom, over the kingdom of Self.

God knows our areas of weakness, He knows when Pride and Ego
threaten to overwhelm. He knows where we wrestle with Self vs Him.

there may be areas of our lives where we find it easy to follow Him, to deny
our Self, to love and serve Other; but there may also be areas where we
have to depend on Him, where we require Him to set us free from our Self.

this dependence on Him will always be required, because:

none of us are without sin.
none of us are without selfishness.
none of us are perfect.

there will always be selfishness that threatens
to distract us from devoting the Self to Christ.

in the garden of Eden, at the fall, we saw an act of lusting for Self-awareness;
as Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
tempted towards having the moral ability to judge and discern like God.

unfortunately we still abuse and misuse this moral ability to this day:

using it to cast blame on our Self, on Other, and on God.
using it to judge Other, to judge good and evil, etc.

but may i encourage us today to spur one
another on toward sacrificial stewarding:
to give of our Self, as Christ gave Himself for us.

may we not attack or accuse Other, but attach our Self to Christ.
may we not neglect or ignore the need of Other, but seek to serve Other.
may we lose our Self for the sake of Christ and for the sake of loving Others.

it is when we get lost in serving and loving Other
that we truly lose our Self-serving nature.

it is when our awareness of Him is greater
– it is when we are filled with His beauty, His glory, His goodness –
that our Self, our pride, our ego, our Personas, dims.

His face shines, radiant, and we, unashamed, behold Him;
when we behold Him, we cannot behold Self.

and so we are called to deny Self daily, hourly;
to fight selfishness, to reject our Self-serving nature.

and instead, we are invited to steward our Self:
the abilities God has given and entrusted us,
seeking to glorify Him and love Others well.

we will all fail and fall into the temptation of elevating Self.

but may we look to Jesus, and learn from Him
what it means to steward and give of the Self,
and to conform oneself to the will of God.

we are not to look to each other.
we are not to blame, or guilt, or shame one another.
we are not to judge or accuse another’s Self.

selfishness is a sin, but it is a sin that only God can reveal.
we can rebuke and correct in love, but selfishness itself is only
mask of deeper wounds, deeper sins, that only God can tend to.

selfishness reveals misdirected desires. but God invites us
to redirect our desires, and to encourage one another
on the journey of sanctification, of conforming to Christ.

our desires are to be for Him, for Him to the first Desire in our hearts,
and the fruit of this Desire in our lives is our Love toward Other.

how we treat, speak, serve and Love Other reveals our hearts;
do we see Other as an image-bearer, worthy of Love?

unfortunately, it is not always natural to desire to love
and serve Other, especially when our Self is so needy.

we see a theme, in society, of collective arrogance
leading us toward collective ignorance of Other.

we so justify our Self that we ignore anything
else that does not serve our interests:

think of Gaza, think of climate and societal collapse 
think of anything that isn’t in your geographical vicinity

is it not easier for you to focus on your own life,
your own sphere, than to create space for Other?

but what does God call us to?

“a new command i give you: love one another. as i have
loved you, so you must love one another. by this everyone
will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

to love one another, as He has loved us [john 13:34-35]

this is a Love worth sharing, worth stewarding.

the Self-love movement wants to tell us
that Love can be Self-generated, Self-sustained.

but we cannot love Other’s well if we are
Self-obsessed or Self-seeking in our love.

on the surface, Self-love celebrates selfhood, a true authentic Self.
but at the same time, it places Self on a pedestal, it elevates Self above Other.

this is still an unhealthy extreme on the spectrum of Self.

so how do we find in ourselves a greater Love for Other?

we start in God’s presence, in His love. we learn by walking in His ways, following after His heart.
and we respond by loving our neighbours, our enemies, anyone ‘Other’ than Self.
slowly, we learn the joy of laying down our lives, for the sake of His Love being made known.

we pay attention, not only to the way God has made us, but to the way God has made Other.
we call out their gifts, talents, and ability. we encourage one another in Love.

Dr Cook says that selfhood develops one’s own talents,
because that’s what God asks of us as a unique Self,
while also calling us to help develop Other’s talents.

becoming our true God-given Self leads us to
desire helping others to become their true Self.

we steward Love toward Other, desiring them to live in light of their God-given Self.

Timothy Keller says that this is what Other’s will witness, notice, in our lives:

“the thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble
person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us.”

the Gospel transforms us towards Love of God and Love of Other:
our hearts are completely changed towards Gospel-humility,
which does not live for Self-interest, but in the interest of Other.

healing relationship to Self

maybe parts of this post, my scars and stories, resonated with you.
maybe you are aware that you too have a broken, distorted relationship to Self.

so i wanted to finish by looking at how we heal this relationship to Self
how we hold onto a healthy selfhood, in light of our God-given self.

(scattered throughout this post you’ll notice i’ve also tried to address this)

we do not want to serve or love Other from a place of obligation, but of desire.

we want our obedience to be sown in our souls so that we might find
joy in this command, in serving and loving Other.

it was a radical thought for me, that we might best love and serve Other,
by first ensuring we attend to Self, and attend to our God-given abilities.

i have been learning, that in order to truly love others well, and to love God with all of our Self
(with all our hearts, minds, soul, strength) we must possess a strong sense of Self:

we must know how to give of our heart, mind, soul, strength to God.
we must know how to lay down our own thoughts, desires, opinions.

we cannot be sacrificial, servant-hearted, if we do not know our Self.

is it a sacrifice if there is no knowledge of what is being given?

a sacrifice is to “make sacred” something.

a sacrifice requires us to intentionally offer
our Self for the sake of something greater.

we must know our Self, in order to know our convictions, our boundaries, our gifts.
we must know our Self, in order to know how to deny our Self.

we must also know our Self, in order to be known by our loving God.

how else can we receive, can be perceive, how great His Love for us?

we are not, however, called to abide in this knowledge of Self.
we heal and tend to our Self in relationship with God, and with Other.

we abide in the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of His Love for us.
and from the fullness of this Love, we practice stewarding this Love towards Other.

we sacrifice our gifts, our abilities, our time, our energy,
for the sake of Other’s knowing of this Love.

we learn how to steward our Self in relationship with Others,
by seeking to understand Other, and how we can best
love them, serve them, and call them to be their true Self.

along the way, we will discover that Self-denial is hard.

and sacrifice is a choice.

we must choose to give, as Christ has given.
we must choose to love, as God so loved.

Jesus chose this path, and invites us to also
choose to walk in sacrificial stewardship.

how do we choose Other over Self?

what often prevents us from seeing and bearing witness to Other,
is our own insecurities, Self-interest, and selfish desires.
these are also what prevent us from living wholehearted and free.

Fear and Shame love to keep us in chains to an insecure Self,
a Self that tries to project a Persona to the world, to protect the Self
from being hurt, while consequentially, also preventing the Self
from being truly seen and known and loved by God and Other.

God sees the layers and wounds of Self,
how the Self tries to protect the Self.

He knows that Self gets threatened, more defensive,
when we are judged or condemned or questioned.

but God calls, in a quiet whisper to that Self
to be free from the chains of a Self-serving life.

living for Self does not lead to happiness.
living for Him, loving Him and Other, is where true joy is found.

the more we choose Other, and
the more we choose Love,
the less it becomes a sacrifice,
and the more it becomes a joy.

the more we choose gospel-humility, the more serving
becomes an act of joyful obedience not obligation.

.

we are all selfish, to one degree or another.

and while i love my own company and introspection, i also feel
called to lay down my Self, my energy, my fear, my time, and
to steward my Self, to steward Love, for the sake of God and Other.

.

to finish, here are words of wisdom from Dr Cook on
how to start healing your relationship to Self, in order
to Love other’s from a place of wholeheartedness:

“it starts by paying attention to your own inner longings. it starts by paying attention
to your God-given self. and this is not selfish, i’m going to say it one more time. this
is how you heal. this is how you become the person God made you to become. and as
you become more of your true self, your God-given self. you will discover that you have
more goodness, more wisdom, and more capacity to bring to the people around you.”

paying attention to how God has made you is how you heal
your relationship with Self. but it doesn’t end with Self. it
leads you to having an awareness and understanding of what
God has called you to share, to steward with this world.

so steward You, steward Love.

be attentive to Self, in order that you may be intentional
in directing your attention to God and Other.

… and don’t look to the person next to you!

look to Jesus.

learn from Him how to steward your God-given life.

Xxx