What If I Hate Myself?

If there were a scale and on the Right, it measures how much you love yourself and on the Left, it measures how much you hate yourself, which side would you say the needle is pointing?  I am sure that needle moves back and forth throughout your day but which side does the needle point to the most?

I grew up feeling like there was something broken inside of me.  I wasn’t good enough.  I wasn’t smart enough.  Everyone else in the family were highly intelligent and successful and then there was me.  Boy average.  Nearsighted and needing glasses in the 2nd grade with allergies, asthma, mild Tourette’s, and a very average student.  Kind of a sneezing, wheezing, myopic kid who could not sit still.

On the other hand, I was very fast and competitive.  I could beat anyone in a race on the school yard.  And I was great at dodgeball.  I think the Tourette’s helped because they didn’t know if I was faking a move or doing a twitch.  Honestly, I did not know myself, but I was always the last one in the circle.

Going to a private High School helped me academically.  I graduated from Villanova in 1975 and got my Masters of Divinity from Western Seminary.  I worked with youth and really enjoyed it and when I became a Senior Pastor the churches I pastored grew fairly dramatically. However, deep inside there was still this feeling like I was broken and not good enough and failure was just around the corner.

What helped me in this area of my struggles was meditating on Psalm 139.  Specifically, these verses;

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

God really began to heal my wounds and the lies I believed about myself.  He knitted me together in my mother’s womb.  I am made specifically to His plan.  And when I could thank him and say to Him and myself … “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” My wounds began to heal.

Do you realize that God made you just the way He wanted you to be?  He designed your genetics and selected your personality.  Now, the context of our birth and the family we grew up in have an impact on us as well.  It is both the nature of our body as well as the nurturing that molds us.  However, if there was not nurture but pain in your childhood even that He can heal.

Can you say to God that you are thankful for the way He made you?  And no matter what your strengths or weaknesses are God makes all the difference.  In fact, He specializes in taking our weaknesses and giving us His strength.  God is sovereign and He is in control.  If we yield ourselves to Him, He will work His plan in our lives.

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