...We also ought to love ourselves.

"God help me to accept the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is." When I saw that little printed poster in the bookstore at a women's retreat center, I knew I had to have it. It's framed and hanging in my office at the church. 

I know I'm too hard on myself. It's been a lifelong struggle. Some would call it a self-esteem issue. I've come to the conclusion that it's deeper than that. It's a spiritual issue that affects all the relationships in my life, including the relationship I have with God.

A few months after I was divorced, my brother asked me to officiate at his daughter’s wedding. I was happy to do it, but then on the day of the wedding I almost had a melt down. 

I looked out over the congregation that had assembled, and I saw both of my older brothers with their wives; each of them had married his childhood sweetheart. I remember going to their weddings when I was just a kid. After all these years, they were still married in solid relationships. I also saw my younger sister sitting beside her husband; the two of them had an extraordinary relationship that I had always envied. And there I was, standing before them, giving a wedding homily about how to have a happy marriage. I felt like they were looking at me naked, with everything exposed that I tried so hard to hide.  

From the wedding ceremony we went on to the reception, where all the couples were dancing and I wanted to disappear. I can’t recall ever feeling like such a failure in all my life. That moment seemed to reinforce every negative thing I had carried around about myself for as long as I could remember. Particularly, that I wasn't worthy of the love another.

The irony was that, as much as I was feeling judged in that moment, none of my siblings had judged me. They were kind and loving and did everything they could to help me through the day. My judgment had come from within.

If you’re anything like me, the most difficult person to forgive may be yourself. I have a hard time letting go of my past mistakes, particularly those times when I may have hurt someone I care about. In fact, I'm able to accept the forgiveness of God more easily than I can forgive myself. 

Do you know how arrogant it is to refuse to forgive yourself? It’s like saying, God doesn’t really know much, because I know best and I know who is and isn’t worth forgiving. So it’s my pride that keeps me from forgiving myself. And, come to think of it, it's my pride that keeps me from forgiving other people who have wronged me as well. If God forgives, who am I to think I know better than God? 

Over the past decade or so, I've tried to make it a daily practice to forgive myself. I know that it's traditional for Christians to confess their sins and seek God's forgiveness, and that's cool. But I never have a problem with that--the God forgiving me part. My difficulty is in forgiving myself.

When I'm all caught up in my crankiness...when I find fault with pretty much everyone around me...when I'm resentful or wallowing in self-pity, underneath it all is the problem I'm having with forgiving myself. That's why the practice of self-forgiveness has become so important for me.

I suspect I'm not alone. For many of us, the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. The good news is that although it may feel like this self-destructive viewpoint is holding us captive, by the grace of God, we are free. It's a matter of seeing ourselves through the eyes of the God who loves us. And here's the real kicker. In those times when it's all too much, and we fail miserably at loving ourselves, God forgives us even for that.

1 John 4:11 says, "Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another." For myself and other people like me, consider a bit of a twist on the text. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love ourselves.

Extravagant, Over-the-Top Love that Doesn't Hold Back

“Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” Say what? That’s what Jesus tells his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. It may help to know that this isn’t really a very good translation of the original Greek text. It sounds like Jesus is calling us to live perfect little lives and never make any mistakes, but that’s not his intent at all. The word perfect comes from the Greek word for goal, end or purpose. And that’s what the Sermon on the Mount is all about: accomplishing your God-given purpose in life. In The Message translation of the Bible, Eugene Peterson does a better job of translating the Greek. He renders it in English as, “You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”

Here’s that verse in its context in Peterson’s translation:
38-42"Here's another old saying that deserves a second look: 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.' Is that going to get us anywhere? Here's what I propose: 'Don't hit back at all.' If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
43-47"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."

Jesus isn’t telling us, “Don’t ever make any mistakes or do anything wrong.” In fact, if you live like that – trying to be perfect – you will end up doing exactly what Jesus is NOT asking of us here. Because what he wants of us is extravagant, over-the-top love that doesn’t hold back. You can’t love like that if you’re afraid of making a mistake.

Annie Dillard has written that “we catch grace like a man filling a coffee cup under a waterfall.” I refer to this image often because it’s the best one I can think of to describe what the Jesus Way of life looks like. Imagine holding a cup under a waterfall. The waterfall is the love of God and it keeps coming and coming and coming. It’s an extravagant, over-the-top love that you couldn’t hold back if you tried. And that love fills us to overflowing. It fills us and it spills out all over the place and then it fills us again and again. That’s the way it works when we open ourselves to receive the love God has for us. And when we live as the people God created us to be, as God’s beloved, God’s love pours into us and spills out of us onto others. We can’t help it. That’s who God is and that’s who we are.

But it seems that we have trouble living like an open cup under a waterfall. All too often we’re more like jars. We take in a little bit of God’s love and we seal it up and carry it around like it’s for us and us alone. That’s not who God has called us to be.

So, what is it in your life that keeps you from being the person God has called you to be? What keeps you from loving extravagantly, over the top, in a way that doesn’t hold back?

As a step toward living more as the person God has called you to be, I want to challenge you to step outside your comfort zone and love extravagantly. Think of a way that you would typically hold back, and bust loose. Just once.
• You might bake some cookies, take them to your neighbor’s house, ring the doorbell and say, “Hi, I’m Nancy. I’m embarrassed that I’ve lived next door to you for two years and we’ve never spoken. So, today I decided to do something about it. These cookies are for you…”
• How about sending a card to a friend you’ve been estranged from, just to let them know you’ve been thinking about them and hope they’re doing well?
• You might say the words, I love you to someone you love but have never told.
• Instead of flipping that guy the bird when he cuts you off in traffic, why not say a prayer for him? (God knows he needs it!)
• Or you might just say hello to a stranger on the street, if that’s not the sort of thing you would normally do.

Challenge yourself to step outside your comfort zone and live as the beloved child God created you to be. Stop carrying the love of God around in a jar and let it flow into your cup and over the top onto others. Don’t hold back. And then, after you’ve done it once, you might challenge yourself to find a new way to express over-the-top love every day.

Each time you do this, you’ll be one step closer toward living out your God-given identity by living graciously and generously toward others, the way God lives toward you.

Beloved

Why can’t I love the way I long to be loved?
With mouth wide open, gasping for air,
I disappoint myself time and again
by expecting, and needing, and aching.
I had hoped to love freely, and selflessly, and joyfully.

Am I smothering my love
with past patterns of pathos rehearsed ad nauseum, now simply pathetic?
with blind spots carefully constructed to shield me from seeing the truth?
with razor-sharp fear I dare not approach without a bag of blood in the bank?
So many breath-defying barriers that keep me from loving the way I long to be loved.

And yet, my failed attempts at loving never prevent me
from being dearly loved by the One
who breathes a love into my lungs
that fills me to my fingers and my toes.
I am loved the way I long to be loved.

I am beloved.

The Best Eclair I Ever Tasted

It’s called the golden rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” A principle offered in every major religion in one form or another, it calls forth a certain amount of empathy for other people.

We teach it to our children so they can learn to be decent human beings who are considerate toward others. If Tommy punches Julie in the nose, we say, “Now Tommy, you wouldn’t like it if Julie punched you like that, would you?” Well, of course not. So we learn to give others the same consideration we would like them to give us.

But I’m not so sure that’s quite what Jesus intended when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Not when you look at that verse in its biblical context. It seems to be not so much a guideline for how to get along with other people as a description of what it means to live a way of life that manifests the love of God.

The way we love is usually such a poor imitation of the way God loves. We may love out of guilt, because we feel crummy if we don’t. Or we may love out of obligation, because we know it’s the right thing to do. Or perhaps we love as the result of an intellectual exercise. Like the Christian who looks on someone who is hungry and thinks about the passage where Jesus says, “I was hungry and you fed me.... As you did it for the least of these, you did it for me.” And they'll say, "I need to think of this person as I would think of Jesus, and how would I treat Jesus?” That’s love as an intellectual exercise.

Mother Teresa was known to say on many occasions that she saw Jesus in every human being, no matter how unlovable that person might have been. She didn’t have to go through the intellectual exercise and decide to love every time she encountered a person who was difficult to love. She didn’t have to convince herself that somehow the way she treated that person was like the way she would treat Jesus. That person wasn’t like Jesus to her. That person was Jesus. When she saw the person, she saw Jesus.

Understanding the difference is a key to understanding what Jesus meant when he said, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” If we have to filter this through an intellectual exercise that takes us to the point of considering how we might like to be treated by others and then offering that same treatment to them, we’re not quite there yet. The intent of doing unto others as you would have them do to you is not to treat others the way you would like them to treat you. The intent is to love others because in doing so you are loving yourself. That is to say that when you love others, you are actually loving yourself because you are connected. They are not like you. They are you. The same love of God that fills you to overflowing fills them to overflowing and it all spills together into one big sea of love. We’re a part of that. So that whatever we do for another, we do for ourselves.

Back when my kids were living with me, we all had a great love for chocolate éclairs. Sometimes I would go to the bakery and pick one up for each of us and we’d all indulge in ecstasy. And sometimes I’d just want to have an éclair for myself. Especially if I was going through a stressful day and I had to do something I hated, I’d pick myself up an éclair and have it waiting for me in the fridge when I got home, as a reward. Of course, when I did that I had to be sure to hide the éclair so neither of the kids saw it or it wouldn’t be there by the time I got home. And when it came time to eat it, I’d have to sneak off someplace by myself so I wouldn’t have to share it.

Well, it was one of those times. I was on my way home after a grueling day and I knew there was an éclair in the fridge waiting for me with my name on it.

I arrived home to find my daughter frazzled. She clearly had been crying. We sat at the kitchen table and she told me about a terrible disappointment that day in school that broke her heart. After we talked I asked, “Gretchen, would a chocolate éclair help?”

She smiled broadly. “A chocolate éclair always helps.”

I went to the fridge and got the éclair I had hidden away and presented it to her. “Well, I just happen to have one right here. Enjoy!”

I handed her a fork and watched while she ate my éclair. And the weirdest thing happened. I could actually taste that éclair in my mouth while Gretchen ate it. And it tasted soooo good.

Had that been a sacrifice? Perhaps it appeared that way to someone on the outside. But from the inside, it was no sacrifice at all. In fact, I couldn’t ever remember that any éclair I had ever eaten in my life tasted as good as that one.

We have this idea of loving the way Jesus loved as being connected to sacrifice. And, from the outside, that’s what it looks like. It’s a sacrifice to give yourself in love. But from the inside, that’s not how it looks at all. Because when you truly love another, you are truly loving yourself. That’s why Jesus can say that we’re blessed when we become poor for the sake of the poor, when we hunger for the sake of the hungry, when we weep with those who weep. It may seem like a sacrifice for those who don’t get it, but for those who are in tune with the love of God and the way it works, there is no sacrifice. “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy,” Jesus says. When you offer yourself in love, there is no sacrifice. Only joy. It’s the sort of thing Jesus was talking about when he revealed that the secret to life that eludes so many people is quite simply this: If you give your life away, you’ll receive more than you could ever imagine. And if you hoard your life and keep it all to yourself, that’s a sure fire way to lose everything.