Loving Ourselves

Today I gave a talk in church :) I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Since there is Valentines Day on Tuesday, my topic was on love. Here it is:
Talk: Love
So with valentines being on Tuesday, my talk is on love. At first I thought sweet! This'll be easy. But then I tried to get some stuff down on paper and realized how broad the topic is. Since our church is centered on Jesus Christ, I looked to His life an realized everything He said and did was centered on love. My plan was to find a conference talk and base my talk on that, so I searched love and love has been mentioned 2792 times in general conference. Love is HUGE!
So then I started thinking about the ten commandments, and the first is to love God and the second is to love thy neighbor as thyself.
When the Savior was asked to name the greatest commandment, He did not hesitate. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," He said. "This is the first and great commandment." (Matthew 22:37, 38.)
These two things are talked about a lot, loving God and loving your neighbor. And serving God through serving your neighbor, but sometime we skip over the "as thyself" part. Before we are in a position to love our neighbors, we have to love ourselves. We shouldn't go around hugging ourselves, but we need to love ourselves and know who we are.
I can't tell you how many times I have given someone a compliment, and have them respond, "No, no that's not..." and totally deny it. That's NOT being humble, that's degrading yourself, and putting yourself down. Being humble is when you accept a compliment with 'thank you' and in your mind silently thank our Heavenly Father for whatever it is. We did an activity at Be the Best You camp a few years ago, when the speaker was giving a talk kind of like this, and we were supposed to turn to our neighbor and give them a compliment and our neighbor was supposed to say, "thank you" and give them a compliment back. And they warned us not to respond with" No, no that's not true" or anything like that. And Hannah was sitting next to me, and she turned to me and said, "Brooke, your take really good notes for all the speakers," and the first words that came out of my mouth were, "What?! No I don't" and then I realized my mistake and I was shocked that two seconds after they had warned us about that, I did it! Apparently I wasnt taking good enough notes. ;)
There is great power in knowing who we are. And letting Heavenly Father love us too. We don't have to be worthy of Heavenly Fathers love. When we know and accept who we are it gives us power. We are all a son or daughter of God. We receive power from Him when we look to him.
This reminds me of Moses when Satan tempted him and called him son of Man, and Moses pretty much replied, "Who are you calling son of man? I am a son of God.
He totally knew who he was and loved himself, and because of that he was in a position to help the children of Israel escape Egypt and helped them for 40 years in the wilderness.
I'd like to bear my testimony that I know how important love is. I know that our Savior's love for us is amazing, and I am so grateful for the infinite atonement. I know that in order to fulfill the second greatest commandment, we must first love ourselves. I love our Savior with all my heart! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.