Thoughts from Everyday Life

What if the way we love God, ourselves, and our neighbor is more connected—and more transformative—than we’ve ever realized.

Sometimes the teachings of Jesus feel simple on the surface, yet they hold a depth that keeps unfolding.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on what it really means to love God, love our neighbor, and love ourselves—and how these three aren’t separate commands at all, but strands of the same braid. This piece is my attempt to sit with that truth and explore how it shapes the way we live and love.

The Commands Were Never Separate

As I contemplated Jesus’ words about loving God with all our hearts and loving our neighbor as ourselves, I kept circling back to a simple truth:

These are not separate instructions.

If I’m going to love my neighbor, I also need to love God and myself.

Yet it’s easy for a quiet misunderstanding to slip into our thinking.

We often treat loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbor as separate efforts we’re supposed to manage.

But Jesus didn’t separate them.

He braided them together.

He treated them as one.

Pull on any strand and the others tighten. Neglect one and the whole thing begins to fray.

Learning to Love Ourselves

So, how do we love ourselves?

The truth is that it’s not always easy.

Many of us grew up believing that loving ourselves was selfish or unspiritual, or somehow in competition with loving others. We may carry old wounds, hurtful words spoken over us, or unreasonable expectations placed on us. Failures we can’t quite forget no matter how hard we try. Others of us have spent years caring for everyone else while quietly ignoring our own needs.

When we try to love God while looking down on ourselves, something strains. It’s difficult to trust the love of God if, deep down, we believe we are unworthy of it. We may go through the motions of doing, serving, striving—but underneath it all is a subtle resistance, a hesitation to fully receive what we’re convinced we don’t deserve.

But when we begin to see ourselves as God sees us—people made in His image—our posture softens. We were not accidentally created.

God cares for us. Not because we’ve perfected anything, but because He gave us the gift of life and loves us. He loved us before we even knew how to ask for it.

When we accept this, loving God becomes less about reaching upward and more about responding. There’s less grasping, more resting. Less performance, more trust.

How Self-Love Shapes Neighbor-Love

As our view of ourselves shift, something surprising happens—the way we treat others changes.

If we are harsh with ourselves, we tend to carry that sharpness into our relationships. It may show up as impatience, quiet judgment, or unrealistic expectations of others.

But when we learn to be honest and gentle with our own limitations, we become more at peace with ourselves and more generous with others.

We listen longer.

We forgive quicker.

We stop needing others to be perfect.

This is where loving our neighbor stops feeling like a duty and starts becoming a natural extension of who we are becoming.

Love, in this sense, is not fragile or sentimental. It is the foundation of a life that can withstand chaos, division, and disappointment.

It holds a family together in hard seasons.

It holds a friendship together.

It steadies a community when the world feels unsettled.

This is the kind of love Jesus talked about—not shallow or convenient, but resilient, grounded, and enduring.

When Strands Weakens

Still, the braid weakens when one strand is neglected.

If we focus only on loving others while ignoring our own well-being, resentment eventually creeps in. We give and give, but something inside us begins to fray. Love turns into obligation.

But when we care for ourselves in a grounded, honest way—resting when needed, setting boundaries, being truthful about what we can and cannot carry—we are able to love others without losing ourselves in the process.

On the other hand, if self-love becomes isolated—cut off from love of God and others—it can quickly turn inward and hollow. It becomes less about truth and more about comfort, less about growth and more about control.

Held Together by God’s Love

Loving God, yourself, and your neighbor is stepping into a relationship that we keep growing in. In that space, God’s love holds the braid together.

You don’t have to perfect one before moving to the others. They are all intertwined. Each one shapes and strengthens the others. As you learn to receive love, you become better at giving it. As you practice giving love, you begin to understand it more deeply. As your understanding deepens, your trust grows—and the whole braid becomes stronger.

So I find my self asking: Am I staying connected to the braid?

Because even in our imperfection, true love has a way of holding together what we cannot. And when we remain in God’s love, something remarkable happens.

What once felt like striving becomes grace.

What once felt like pressure becomes peace.

And the love that flows through us becomes stronger than anything that tries to pull us apart.

It becomes a quiet strength within us—steady, patient, and deeply rooted.

It softens what is rigid, heals what is tender, and steadies what is uncertain.

And slowly, almost without noticing, love becomes less of something we try to produce and more of something we naturally carry into the world.

It holds us together when life is heavy.

It carries us when we falter.

It reminds us that we were never meant to love in isolation, but always in connection.

When we stay woven into God’s love, the whole braid strengthens—and so do we.

As I continue to reflect on this in my own life, I’m reminded that we’re all in a process!

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts! If any of this resonates with you, I would love to hear what it stirs in you.