What do you think of when you hear the word self-care? Do you picture your friend who must get her nails done weekly, who plays with her iPhone for hours at a time while her preschoolers run outside without supervision? Do you picture your spouse who ignores you, your kids and the house while going out for a beer every. single. day. after work? This is not what I am talking about.

I am talking about valuing ourselves enough to treat ourselves well. Perhaps you were raised to believe that taking care of yourself is selfish. After all, we “should always” think of others before ourselves right? I disagree. In Mark 12:31, Jesus tells us to love others as we love ourselves. This command assumes we love ourselves. But do we really? Many of us don’t love ourselves well. We might:

• Run ourselves ragged trying to meet everyone else’s (as well as our own) expectations
• Say “yes” to everything asked of us – even when we really DON’T want to do it
• Work from sunup to sundown seven days a week, because there is “just so much to do”
• Take responsibility for everyone else’s happiness – but our own.

In my mind, loving someone else like this would not be that loving. And when we “love” ourselves this way, we are not being loving to ourselves either.

Amy Seiffert, who writes for A Wife Like Me agrees with me. I recently read her blog entitled, “Why God Cares About Your Self-Care.” In this blog, she looks at self-care from a new perspective.  She points out that when we don’t take care of ourselves, our souls begin to slip away. She says that when we feel we “must” do everything and take care of everyone, we often do this out of a need for control. She thinks:

one of the biggest barriers to taking care of ourselves is our inability to trust God. Tweet This

Amy tells a story from her own life. Her son had just been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which put her in a tailspin. She spent every waking minute searching for a cure for him. Then, a friend invited her to play tennis once a week for an hour. She wrestled with whether this was a good use of her time. Shouldn’t she spend every possible moment trying to make her son healthy? As she wrestled with this decision, she heard God say to her, “Take care of your soul.” When she argued with Him, he said, “Trust me with your son as you play tennis.” Amy writes: