I believe with all my heart that finding our self-love begins with forgetting our self-focus.
Recently I asked this question of a teenager struggling with self-esteem:
"Did you like yourself when you were a little girl?"
She paused and then said, “I guess I didn’t think about that. I just knew that I did.”
I’ve thought a lot about that answer. I'm guessing most of us liked ourselves when we were children. But for some reason, many of us feel differently as adults.
We could spend hours debating why we lose self-esteem as we grow, but what intrigues me the most is the connection between being "childlike" (which the scriptures teach us means we’re becoming more like Christ) and having self-love.
As we re-learn to like ourselves, we are becoming more childlike and Christlike because, guess what?
I think Jesus liked Himself.