I’ve come to the conclusion that knowing how to love others comes WITH, is born ALONGSIDE, knowing how to love yourself. Jesus himself said it: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” As people we love ourselves when we allow ourselves the freedom to be who we are while still leaving room for who we MIGHT be—when we allow ourselves the freedom of stillness and the freedom of transformation. The freedom of growth. Of trial and error. We love ourselves when we can accept that AT THIS POINT IN TIME we think like THIS and feel like THAT and dress in THAT MANNER but tomorrow all of that may change and you know what? It’s perfectly okay! We’re constantly evolving. We’re creatures sensitive to stimuli and no one is so set in his ways that he’s never changed by external phenomena like time and age and education and new environments and unexpected relationships with unlikely people. We love ourselves when we recognize that “ourself” isn’t static. Sometimes we have more to give and sometimes we have less to give but no matter what we deserve the same grace we show others. We take all our strengths and all our weaknesses and all our good hair days and all our bad hair days—we take what’s good in us and what could use some improvement—and we call it all lovely, beautiful, ACCEPTABLE, simply because it’s all of that TOGETHER, all the pretty and all the ugly, that makes us who we are.
We’re called to do the same with others. If I once believed in the existence of a perfect OTHER—a perfect friend or a perfect parent or a perfect leader—I now know better. Jesus never demanded perfection—the Pharisees did. Jesus demanded only authenticity: an authentic willingness to take up a cross and follow Him. Give like Him. Serve like Him. LOVE like him. When we love someone (note: LOVE and not IDOLIZE), we see both the parts that are lovable and the parts that are not; we see the wounds that have scarred over and the ones that still need healing; we see who they are when their hair is styled and their makeup is done but we remember who they were at 2 am the night before when they woke up sick and they weren’t presentable and nothing about them dazzled our eye. Being able to love another means letting go of the “should” and embracing the “is”—we stop foisting our own ideas and likes and convictions upon them and accept that they come stamped: their experiences and their circumstances and their prior relationships have irrevocably shaped their interior.
And the interior belongs to them. It’s an area over which we exert no control, no matter how much we’d sometimes like to change (note: FIX) their rough and rocky emotional terrain. That’s what grace is (the same kind Jesus lavishes on US): THEIR freedom to choose. THEIR freedom to make mistakes; to live imperfectly. OUR God-given ability to love DESPITE instead of BECAUSE. That’s why self-love is so critical. If we can’t love the lessons our mistakes taught us we won’t tolerate the mistakes of others; if we can’t love the growth and strength our scars represent we won’t understand or empathize with someone else’s battles. If we love ourselves only under flattering lighting we’ll never, NEVER, be able to see her darkness and still call her beloved. Because we are. Beloved, that is. All of us. That’s what’s so beautiful but so challenging about the commandment to love others as we love ourselves: we need a heart like God’s. It’s a choice that contradicts instinct. Loving like that—both ourselves and others—requires recognizing that grace is sufficient. We all come as we are. A little broken, a little jaded, a little unpolished and rough around the edges. We come and sit at the feet of the One whose love informs our own; whose love makes ours POSSIBLE. There’s no need for perfection there. His love—and by extension, OUR love—is enough.
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