All posts tagged: doing things out of guilt

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Women need to set boundaries

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I believe many Christian women find themselves feeling guilty about things that they think they ’should’ be doing. We do not have a clear understanding about what it means to live a happy, wholesome life. We seem to operate mostly  from guilt and ‘should have’s’. Gerri Scezzarro, author of The Emotionally Healthy Woman, says that we have  a wrong perception of a good, loving Christian woman. She states that most women believe this is how they need to live: “They never say ‘no’.  They have an active social calendar.  They juggle many things and never complain.  They get things done and put others before themselves I fell into this trap and started my Christian experience with this popular phrase as my cornerstone, JOY.   Alas, JOY, (Jesus first, others second and lastly you) did not work for me as I continually sacrificed my own and family’s wants and needs to help others.  I ended up being a joyless Christian women trying to carry my cross and save the whole world. It was not a pretty picture! …

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Are you self harming?

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Whenever I heard the word ‘self-love,’ it made me cringe as I immediately thought of ‘selfishness’. I was pretty sure this was not the Christian way. In my mind, self-love and selfishness were the same thing. But as I pressed into my journey to wholeness — physically, emotionally and spiritually — the idea of needing to love yourself kept coming up. I wasn’t sure how Biblical this was but thought I needed to find out if it was or wasn’t. It seemed that to heal from past issues and recent traumas that constantly triggered me, I was being pointed in the direction of ‘self-love’. What was I getting myself into? And how did this fit with the verse, “deny yourself and take up your cross and follow after me?” Jesus shed His blood on the cross to save the world and it started to feel like I was doing the same thing, making personal sacrifices for others. But were these the sacrifices that God was asking me to make? Was I being motivated by love …