Tag: love yourself

Categories
faith important

Being Prioritised

With dogs, so I’ve been reading, when you introduce a new dog there has to be a new pecking order sorted, a new claiming of who is top dog. With Renly being 11 years older than Willow, and being the more easy-going, I’ve had to work on making sure he is top dog and she doesn’t bully him. So he gets treats first, gets to choose his place on the couch, etc. I prioritise him over her. Also to get her to behave I have to be top dog so she does as I tell her, and so she feels safe and secure.

That isn’t how it works with God. God doesn’t prioritise any of us. God doesn’t have any of us as “top dog”, care for more than anyone else, have anyone more special than someone else. [Though if we stick with the dog analogy then to feel safe and secure we need to know that God is top dog!]

That isn’t to say we shouldn’t treat people with care and respect – but then I think that might come back to the “if you fully love yourself then you can love your neighbour fully”.

Many of us, especially in childhood, were not prioritised, or it felt like we weren’t prioritised. It could be due to a demanding younger sibling, a major trauma that happens in the family where the parents fold in on themselves and forget about their children, not from abuse but from survival. But even if we can rationalise out the whys we have still be hurts, still felt unloved and unsafe, still felt unprioritised. We were living with an often unseen wound that needs healing; a wound that would appear as a temper tantrum or a shutting down or a sulking or a walking away from a relationship or an addiction.

Though of course with all wounds we need to identify it first.

I think though many of us, because we haven’t acknowledge and subsequently haven’t been healed of this wound of being scared because we felt we were pushed to one side, we don’t believe God will care for us. Rationally there are loads of people so much more deserving we can tell ourselves. Why would God care about my life, my problems, my job, how I’m going to pick up my shopping, etc? We have learned that we don’t come first, that others do and should, but also we feel unsafe when we feel we aren’t prioritised.

But God does care. God doesn’t have “top dogs”, doesn’t have those they care about more than others, those who take priority.

Yes there are people who seem to have more and those who seem to have less and I don’t understand why, but I do know it isn’t because God cares more for one than the other, or thinks some people are better than others. It is a question I plan on taking up when I get to heaven as God and I sit chatting on the side of the River of Life, but till now I’ll keep it as a mystery.

Each and everyone of us comes first with God, which is dead hard to get your head around. I believe this because I have seen my wound, have been healed of it and now can fully accept that God loves and cares for me as much as they do anyone all at the same time. The mystery of faith!

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Categories
perfect love without fear

No Fear

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

July 9, 2026 – Bible verse of the day – DailyVerses.net

I haven’t written on this site for a while. I’ve been concentrating on my Substack and poems and stories but this verse has been pottering away in the background of my mind even before I read it on Daily Verses.

It is that last bit “the one who fears is not made perfect in love“. Now I know that John is saying this is perfect love in Jesus, or that’s how we are taught it in Church and Bible studies. But what if it has a lot to do with not fearing because we have been healed of our past traumas. I think Paul meant something like that when he said

But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,

Philippians 3:13

I believe when we full heal we might be able to remember the event but we forget the deep pain, forget that part that dives deep into our core, into our bodies. When fully healed we no longer react automatically, no longer are open to stomach pains, headaches, and other bodily pains that we often don’t know where they come from. When we are fully healed our bodies can forget the pains, forget the traumas, forget the automatic responses.

But I think we can often only do that when we fully love and know we are fully loved – whether that is by the God who created the Universe or by The Universe, or even by ourselves.

The more I think about it the more I don’t believe we can fully know the love of God/The Universe unless we fully love ourselves and fully see ourselves deserving of love. Until we believe we deserve that perfect love we will always be fearful. Fearful that we’ll spoilt that friendship, lose that job, not have enough money, not be liked, not be a good enough Christian. etc. I’m sure you can add more to that.

But if we believe we deserve that perfect love then we are not fearful, not expecting to be punished, have let go of the past. Only then are we ready to strain towards the future – whatever that maybe – hand in hand with perfect love.

Categories
peace solitude

Content With Solitude

This is where I was sat when these thought came to me. I’m going to try to work out how to get them onto photos but just wanted to share them today

Also want to link this to blog from Deepak – Choosing Happiness in all the Wrong Places because I think we are saying similar things with different words.

Solitude – a place where you can sit with the chattering monkey thoughts and let them slowly settle to the river bottom; where you can stay in that place of peace and wait to see what rises again to the surface

Diane Woodrow – June 2025

Being alone doesn’t mean that all that random “monkey chatter” isn’t there. You don’t feel instantly serene and at peace with yourself and the world. But, I believe, if you don’t sit alone for long enough and allow those monkey thoughts to settle, then wait and allow what God/The Universe wants you to consider at that moment, you will never reach peace with yourself.

So to me when I sat by the sea, just me and my dog, I let the thoughts that were bubbling in me about various things rise to the surface then fall to the depths. I didn’t try to pick any out to think of but waited to see what rose up. I then gained some interesting insights into myself and why things unfold as they do and also about a project that looked like it was failing but was going the wrong way. But I had to sit without an agenda, without people pleasing, and trusting to listen to my heart.

Solitude is a place where you can be fully in love and fully trusting in yourself and just being

Dollar Glen, Scotland – June 2025 – photographed by myself

Solitude is glorious when you can see and know yourself in all that you are – your strengths and weaknesses, hurts and joys, mistakes and triumphs – and know that you like and love yourself just as you are at this moment in time.

Solitude isn’t a place of loneliness. Loneliness can happen in a crowd, especially when you are trying to be someone you are not, when you are trying to please others, when you are afraid to reveal who you really are, when you don’t feel like you fit in.

Solitude is a place of calm, of peace, of being, of knowing who you fully are, of knowing what you fully want to do.

Solitude, I believe, is something you can take into a crowd and enjoy who are you with because you are being fully you with no agenda for yourself or for those you are with. Things don’t have to go a certain way because you are calm within yourself for all that time of being alone.

But this can only come about if you are willing to take time out from the noise and hassle of the life we lead, can let go of those monkey chattering thoughts and listen to your heart.

Solitude can be glimpsed through a porthole. Lady’s Tower, Elie, East Neuk, Fife. Photographed by myself June 2025