Honouring myself

You need to honour yourself, give yourself the time and space to be you, if not, you will get burnt out and lose yourself, she told me. Hmmmm, sage advice, and I have, most recently, been trying to do just that, that is, finding the right balance between honouring my spouse and my marriage, and myself. 

It has been my wont to go full speed ahead and throw myself into life wholeheartedly, often to the detriment of my own well-being. So why would I stop when I got married, especially since married life opened the door to a whole new world of complexities in a alien landscape?

Trying to acclimate to this new environment has been fraught with struggle, and I suspect I will never stop struggling just because that’s what participating in life, being fully engaged in relationships means. There’s always something new ahead, there’s always something that will pull the rug from under your feet just when you thought you have a handle on life. 

Determined to love in a vulnerable, open, giving, selfless manner as described by JP2 in Theology of the Body, I have subsumed my own needs greatly, which was the right thing to do in these first two years of marriage in order to bring unity and harmony, and to bond not just with P, but even Max, the family dog. I am grateful for all the blessings, all the joy, even all the frustrations that have come it of this period of my life. 

When I fall into the abyss of despair, I remind myself first of all, this is not where God wants me to be, living life to the full means much more than just honouring my gifts and talents as a disciple of God, it means a willingness to allow myself to be moulded and refined, which is often not an enjoyable or pain-free process. Mary was told explicitly her soul would be pierced with a sword for being the Mother of Christ and she experienced just that, all the way to Calvary. But just as loving involves pain, sorrow and loss, it also encompasses joy, laughter, fulfilment, a richness in living out the Kingdom of God actively, and finally, the deep satisfaction of self-actualization, of becoming who I am created to be.

Thus I need to keep on relying fully on God, and God alone, to lay my head on Jesus’ chest and wail out my sorrows, and to say to our Blessed Mother the words Saint Teresa of Calcutta highly recommended: Mary, Mother of Jesus, please be a mother to me.

So to honour myself, I will take more QT (quiet time) breaks to water my soul and strengthen my spirit, and to do what gives me joy more frequently such as reading, baking, playing with baby J, and spending time with my Mother. I will honour myself by loving myself more for if I cannot love myself, then I will not have the wherewithal to love others as they deserve to be loved.