“You can’t pour from an empty cup.” We’ve all heard that phrase, but too often we live in complete contradiction to it. Many of us give ourselves away in pieces—pouring into relationships, responsibilities, ministries, and other people’s problems—until we look in the mirror and don’t recognize who we are anymore. We’re exhausted, overlooked, and silently fading. The idea of loving others sounds noble, even spiritual, but when done without boundaries or balance, it becomes a slow fading of self. Patricia Lloyd’s powerful book I Love Me: Finding Peace in the Midst doesn’t just acknowledge this struggle—it speaks directly into it with grace, wisdom, and greatly personal truth.

Patricia opens her journey with a clear dream: a wedding is set, guests are seated, the music is playing, but the bride isn’t ready. In fact, she has no dress. While helping others prepare for the big day, she never prepared herself. That image—of a bride surrounded by beauty yet standing in a garment bag full of rags—is more than a dream. It’s a mirror. It shows what happens when we put everyone else first, believing that self-sacrifice means self-forgetting. Through this symbolism, Patricia reveals a central truth that runs through the entire book: love without preparation leads to burnout. It’s not enough to care for others if we continually neglect ourselves.

What Patricia realized—and what she invites us to realize—is that loving ourselves isn’t selfish; it’s sacred. We cannot give what we do not possess. If we attempt to love others without healing our own wounds or tending to our spiritual and emotional needs, we aren’t really giving love—we’re giving strain. Patricia beautifully redefines self-love not as indulgence but as alignment with how God sees us. To love your neighbor as yourself, you must first understand the value God places on you. You must begin to see yourself through His eyes: chosen, forgiven, cherished, and called. Throughout the book, Patricia’s journey shifts from being a giver who is worn thin to becoming a woman who gives from wholeness. She learned to stop confusing busyness with purpose. In the process of helping everyone else, she had lost connection with herself—and, more importantly, with God. That reconnection came through what she calls the “secret place”—a spiritual sanctuary where she learned to sit still, listen, and be reminded that her worth wasn’t based on what she could do for others, but in simply being God’s beloved. From this space of spiritual intimacy, she found the clarity and strength to love again—this time with boundaries and purpose.

One of the most moving elements of Patricia’s message is the metaphor of the “rags” she carried around in a garment bag for years—pieces of pain, broken dreams, failures, and emotional baggage. Like many of us, she didn’t know how to let go of them. But as healing took place, those rags were transformed. They became quilt squares—stitched together with purpose, each piece telling a story, each story reflecting grace. The rags that once symbolized brokenness became a symbol of restoration. In that transformation, she realized that loving others well doesn’t mean hiding our pain or pretending to be perfect—it means allowing God to heal us so we can become a blessing to others from a place of strength.

That message rings loud in a culture where we often applaud people for overworking, overgiving, and overcompensating. Patricia calls this out gently but firmly. She explains that doing for others without maintaining your own peace leads to emotional exhaustion. Serving from an empty place only breeds resentment and spiritual burnout. To truly reflect Christ, we must serve with wisdom. We must know when to step in and when to step back. Even Jesus took time to withdraw from the crowds and rest. If the Savior of the world valued stillness, why do we resist it so much? Patricia doesn’t only encourage self-love—she models it. Her honesty about delayed obedience, inner wounds, and the challenges of saying no creates a safe space for readers to admit the same. She shows that the journey to loving others begins with confronting ourselves. It means forgiving past mistakes, acknowledging our limits, and honoring our emotional and spiritual capacity. When we begin to love ourselves—truly, greatly, and biblically—we begin to show up in relationships differently. We stop seeking approval and start seeking alignment. We stop enabling and start empowering. And in doing so, we become better friends, partners, parents, leaders, and people.

The beauty of Patricia’s message is its gentleness. There’s no condemnation, only invitation. An invitation to return to the secret place. An invitation to revisit your dreams, to pick up the rags you’ve been carrying, and to let God do something new with them. An invitation to stop performing and start healing. And most importantly, an invitation to believe that you are worthy of love—not because of what you give, but because of who you are.