An Old Reflection on Love.

Reading back through some of my old journals tonight, I found this reflection in one from my senior year of college. It's pretty deep, but honest, I think...

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23 February 2008

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I have suddenly thought of Jesus' command that we love our enemies. Perhaps we are to love our enemies because they are no different than our selves. Perhaps in loving them, we learn also to love ourselves. Perhaps they are our "enemies" simply because they manifest the traits we work so hard to deny or ignore in ourselves. Perhaps the speck in my neighbor's eye is only a reflection of the plank in my own. Can I love my enemy? Or, perhaps the greater question, can I love my self? What if I am my own enemy? Will I accept my own faults, my own fears, my own pain? Or will I always flee my shadow side and what it tells me about myself?

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I am reminded of my own journey to trust and love again. Loss and betrayal ripped away my childhood innocence. Survival required strength--not grief, or fear, or anger. But I was angry; I was deeply afraid; and my pain tore at the very foundations of my being. For years, I built up my defenses, denied my pain, and forced myself to be perfect, to be strong, to be utterly independent. But the shadow never went away. As much as I tried to repress my own "negatives," they would pop up again--in loneliness, depression, anger.

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And then someone sneaked behind the walls. Ellen, my mentor for most of high school, began to love and care for me. She looked into my eyes and saw the depths of my soul; she saw everything imperfect that I hated about myself--and she loved me. In spite of my pain and anger, because of it, in the midst of it, she loved me. And it was her love that helped me learn to accept myself, to love myself. I embraced my shadow side--and all the pain it brought with it.

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But in finally letting myself feel that pain and accept it for what it was, I began to heal. I grieved the loss of my father, but also the loss of my mother's joy, my childhood trust, and my siblings' innocence. I was angry--at God, at Tony, at my father, at the church who wasn't there--and I learned not to be angry with myself for being angry. Healing came as I stopped blaming myself for all that had happened, as I was able to recognize how wrong our pain was. Not that it was wrong for us to feel it, but that the world is a wounded and unjust place.

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The shadows of my pain and fear became part of me, were integrated into who I am. Today, now, I am no longer ruled by the hurts of my past. They are part of my self, and they affect who I have become. Every so often, I cry for our loss, and for what should have been. But the shadows no longer overwhelm me.