I seem to be desiring to love more, to love first without regard to how someone may or may not deserve or even return that love. I can see clearly and acknowledge wrong, embrace it with no fear-only love- and keep no record of it. The ability to embrace it is the key to forgiving it. I can grieve deeply over my own brokenness and the brokenness of others and hold no offense toward either. And I can only grieve if I can acknowledge and surrender to feeling the pain caused by myself and others.
To love is to join yourself to the fate of another. LOVE attaches itself to everything, including the most wretched and vile offender who, by all accounts, deserves death. The story of Christ -God becoming one with a fallen humanity, falling WITH US even into death and hell- is the revelation of ultimate love.
To know Christ is to be conquered by love. If I look at myself as Christ would look at me…I begin to understand that I am completely, wholly and eternally LOVED. I believe that I am precious. My old self -the one destined for death to make way for new life- begins to fade.
And that is only the beginning. The love I find for myself begins to grow and spread to others, too. I’ve always loved others as I loved myself….not well, and not very much. I lived for a long time being afraid of myself and everyone else, thinking it was love. I thought change was only possible by avoiding that which was wrong, but then all I could ever see was what was wrong. It hurts to live like that.
These days I find more mercy than judgment in my heart. For myself, and everyone else. I cannot even describe fully how amazing that feels after a lifetime of nonstop judgment toward myself and others. When I do see something wrong in myself, I don’t back away as quickly as I used to. I am starting to want to embrace it, rather than avoid it. And in the embrace of love, the wrong fades away until it’s just a memory…a memory that fills me with gratitude for love and how it works. It never fails.