You can't give what you don't have!
She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future. Proverbs 31:25 says so. But why most of time we feel empty and God had given us that strength as women for us to lighten other people’s lives and give them hope and put smiles on their face by giving some of what we are clothed without thinking twice?
I have heard the saying "you can’t give what you don’t have" many times over the years but in all honesty it took me years to truly embrace the concept and really understand what it meant.
It is a natural tendency to automatically associate giving with things such as a present or money, but giving involves so much more than physical things.
There have been many times that I struggled to completely trust others and it was difficult to open up and love without feeling vulnerable. And sometimes I'd blame someone for not giving me but I was wrong.
When I was young giving was a challenge and it kept me stuck in the past for far too long. I kept trying to figure out why it was so hard to give the very things that were most important to me!
It was not until I recognized that I was not giving those things to myself that I was able to understand why it was a challenge to give those things to others. It hit me that you can’t give what you don’t have!
How could I completely love another if I had not yet learned to love myself? How could I truly value anything around me if I did not value myself? How I trust others if I struggled with trusting myself? How could I forgive if I had not yet forgiven myself?
These were deep questions but ones that held a profound truth and I realized that there are so many people struggling with the same issue. We live in a world that is so busy and filled with daily demands and the pressure of doing, being, fixing and giving. We spread ourselves too thin and we become very good at helping everyone but ourselves. We try to love, nurture, repair, support and give.
The principle of giving to yourself first is one of the key guides to finding inner peace and to creating successful relationships. It is true that you can’t give what you don’t have and this applies to love, trust, value, honor, belief and forgiveness. Self-care and the nurturing of self is at the foundation of living true to who we are and can cultivate the ability to give so much more.
Learning to give ourselves the gift of love, acceptance, value, honor, trust and forgiveness makes it so much easier to then give to those people we care about without hesitation and without feeling vulnerable. It is easy to forget to take care of ourselves first and can actually feel uncomfortable because we somehow come to believe it is selfish and self-serving. However, care of self is actually the opposite of selfish in my understanding.
I am a healthcare giver at heart and as a career and it is my natural tendency to give, share and nurture others but I have learned that it is a must for me to love and nurture me so that I can be at my best when giving to others. I can’t give my best to those I love if I myself am not taken care of. This was a difficult lesson but one that held a great deal of wisdom and has improved my quality of life and the quality of my relationships significantly.
Giving is important and I believe in giving 100% but the best gift you can give to those you love is to give to yourself first!
Post a Comment: