The Greatest of These Is Love

If you got paid for each time you judged another person, how rich would you be? I can honestly say that I would be wealthy. And I’m not proud of it. It’s not something that I have done intentionally. Yet we all come with our own set of beliefs that have been shaped by our own personal experiences. As much as we may try to shake them, our perceptions of others are a reflection of what we ourselves have incorporated as our own living truth. Over the years, I have come to a place of complete acceptance of my own human nature. Not a blind acceptance that asks for nothing, but an acceptance that understands that I am deeply flawed and yet deeply loved at the same time. I have lied. I have cheated. I have coveted that which I do not have. I have stolen from others. I have done some of these things not in the conventional way you might consider, but at the end of the day…I have done them all. For many years, I judged myself so harshly for the flawed person that I am. I didn’t like who I was. At all. Somehow, however, I had to try to convince my own sense of ego that I was good enough. That I had the answers. In this attempted conviction, I began to notice that it was easy to judge others for who they are. I could point my finger and ask myself how someone else could possibly do ‘that’, because in that moment I was able to turn attention that was too painful to direct at myself, at someone else.

I did this for years. And if you knew me then, you would never have described me as judgmental. Years later, however, I realize that even though I might not have been considered this, I was. I had my set of convictions and beliefs. If something didn’t fit in it, I judged it and believed for a moment that this might give me a peace about who ‘I’ really was. This didn’t lead to any sense of fulfillment, however, because at the end of the day I didn’t have to live with any of the people I was judging for their actions or their beliefs. I had to live with me. And that was sometimes too painful to bear. I tried to hide from myself. Feeling that if anyone knew all the things I have felt, thought, or acted on, they would never be able to love me. They would have nothing but judgment and contempt for me. The sad truth behind all of this is that yes, there were people who would judge me, but at the end of the day there was no one who judged me more harshly than I judged myself.

Because all I could feel was judgment for myself, it was what I unwillingly projected onto others. I worried not only about their judgment toward me, but I also judged them. I had gotten so good at judging myself that it was just a natural extension of who I had become. But gradually and over time, I began to learn how to love deeply. I began to love people for exactly who they were, not who I wanted them to be. I began to see them with all their beauty even when they couldn’t always see it in themselves. In doing so, I began to notice something interesting happening. People changed. I had stopped asking them to or even wanting them to. I didn’t need them to be what I wanted them to be anymore. But suddenly they began shifting in ways that brought out the best possible version of themselves when they were with me. As if in giving my silent permission for someone to just be exactly who they are, there was freedom that allowed a shift to occur that couldn’t occur before when they felt stifled by my unspoken judgments over them. People opened up. They spoke of their pain. They admitted their flaws. They became unafraid to say what it was that they believed made them unlovable.

Seeing how this freed those around me began to free me. I began applying this same love to myself. I began allowing myself my own human frailty and accepting myself with all of my imperfections. I saw that I was made by our unconditionally loving Father and that I was good. And enough. I invite you to see yourself as enough. To know that you truly are beautifully and wonderfully made. I invite you to understand the power of unconditional love toward others. When we look at faith, hope and love…we understand that love is the greatest of these three, but we often speak merely of the power of faith. My thought for the day is this: if faith can move mountains, then what can pure, unconditional love without condemnation or judgment do?

I can’t wait to keep finding out…