Loving Yourself for God’s Sake

Excerpt from Spiritual Classics

Reconcile Your Past

Set your guilt before you. Be specific about the wrongs you charge against yourself. You have hurt others, you have committed acts that infringed on the rights of others. You have neglected to do the loving thing toward others. Now you can do something about it, but it is not enough to feel guilt or sorrow. Make restitution as best you can in ways that bring healing and restore harmony to your life and the lives of those you have hurt. Let go of whatever you have done.…

Let go of memories that tie you to a darkened past. Release thoughts of yesterday that fill you with sadness, guilt, or shame. Allow the forgiving spirit of love to cleanse your mind and set you free. Release yourself from the bondage of your own judgment. Love yourself without condition. Love yourself through the walls of defensiveness and the darkness of your deeds. Love yourself beyond whatever you deserve for such is the love of God.…

Love breaks the chains 

Love breaks the chains that hold you to the past; it allows for growth, change, and new life. When you accept God’s love, you also accept God’s forgiveness. As you love yourself, you also forgive as you are forgiven and you love even more. … 

When you forgive, you also regain your own soul.

The memories of your childhood can be painful and crippling, influencing your present. They come back and haunt you when you least expect it. You hear the voices and see the faces of those times. The circumstances of life robbed much of your childhood. That child, neglected and repressed, grew up too fast. There were too many responsibilities, too many fires to put out. … You were expected to know what to do to be perfect. …

Whether they intend to or not, parents are capable of hurting their children and interfering with their self-love. God is not. The love of God is forever true. You will never feel rejection from God. … 

The love that you allow washes away all that encumbers your life. You will remember how it was, but these memories will be just memories. No longer will they rule your thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Love for yourself melts away the chains that bind you to the past and sets you free for the now.

Discard unrealistic expectations 

Life has beginnings and endings, deaths and resurrections. … In your life there may be unfulfilled yearnings. Your peace will depend on the acceptance of these unfulfillments. 

Reconsider your expectations. Examine the demands you make on yourself. Are they realistic? What do you base them on? Does the pressure to meet these demands take away the centeredness you need to live in peace? Are these demands your own or do they come from others in spoken and unspoken messages?…

Discard the unrealistic expectations and appreciate what is actual in your life instead of constantly looking at what ought to be. Work from reality and release the tension that comes from discontentment. …

God helps you to let go of unfulfilled dreams and expectations. God helps you dream new dreams and hope new hopes. Let go of control. Surrender it to the love and mercy of God. … 

Let God control 

The more control you try to grasp, the less you have; the more control you surrender to God, the more under control your life becomes. Surrendering control doesn’t mean you have become passive or fatalistic. It does mean you trust that God has given you the physical, emotional, and spiritual tools necessary to negotiate life. To surrender control to God releases the tension within that keeps you from responding to life with all your capacity. When you stop pushing and pulling to have things your way, you are more apt to see things God’s way.

As you focus love on God and on yourself, you detach from your obsession with control and perfection. You learn to relax and play as a child and protect yourself from harm. You see things from a spiritual point of view. You set aside anxiety, experience emotions fully, and express them effectively. You leave guilt and shame behind, embrace hope, and build on the foundation of good.