People probably read the title and thought, really, Tina, love! You are going to do a love blog during the week of Valentine’s Day? Yes, I am. Love is one of the most important parts of our lives. If we don’t really start learning to love, we will have issues all our lives. This will be the first blog in our series this week.
First, we will talk about love from the stand point of our dog, Princess Mimi. Yes, I did say we will learn about love from a dog. Now, I am not calling you a dog but she does love like many of us. That sounds funny, right? We love like a dog.
Here is the story of Princess Mimi: Princess Mimi was rescued three years ago. We took her and adopted her. Her English Bulldog face melted our hearts (maybe not Brenton’s). She didn’t immediately integrate into our family but over time she became used to us and now she doesn’t like to have anyone from the family away for too long.
We were finally all attached to one another. She still struggled with new people but she would warm up to them eventually. Of course, other dogs were a totally different story. She hates dogs, even if they are not in her space, and will bark and bare her teethe.
My daughter, Snow, is her mama and Brenton and I are granddad and grandmom. This last weekend Snow went to stay at a friends house. Like every other time Snow leaves, Princess Mimi came to our room and slept with granddad and grandmom (you can imagine how thrilled Brenton is about this).
She laid at the foot of our bed as I finished up some business stuff and Brenton worked on his dissertation. All of a sudden, she began to growl. At first, I thought that maybe a small creature was in our house but then I made a very funny discovery. Princess Mimi was not upset about another small creature in our home. She was upset because she saw her own reflection in the mirror and didn’t recognize herself.
Princess Mimi does not love her own image so how can she be expected to love anyone else. She does not know herself, which means it is harder for her to understand and know others. Okay, maybe this analogy is a little stretch but lets think about it. This is what we do.
We can hardly look in the mirror at ourselves. Every few minutes we put ourselves down. If we make mistakes, we can’t forgive those mistakes. How can we be expected to really look and know someone else or forgive someone for their mistakes.
Even in the Bible it says to love your neighbor as yourself. As yourself! This means first we need to love ourselves. Once we love ourselves, we can love everyone else.
Challenge: Everday, I want you to go to the mirror and say I Love You! Yes, I said to tell yourself I love you. I want you to really look in your eyes and try to mean it. I started doing this after reading Jack Canfield’s Success Principle. It made a huge difference in my life.
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