Loving People Isn't Always The Same As Exusing Behaviors

​I had coffee with a dear friend yesterday. We've traveled similar roads in life. We still do. It's why our conversations can go in unexpected directions.

Yesterday was no exception.

"Do you love yourself," she asked.

The question - seemingly - came from out of the blue. Seemingly because very little actually comes from out of the blue.

With little hesitation, I told her, yes. I do.

She continued on with our conversation, but as she talked I found myself wrestling with an answer that came with too little thought.

Do I love myself?

When she was done talking, I told her that I think I need to correct myself. Maybe I don't love myself, but I no longer hate myself, and for me that's more than enough.

For me, maybe not hating myself is the same as love. I know it is way more than I ever expected. Or felt like I deserved.

It's been a journey. Not hating myself has followed the pathway of me coming to understand myself. I used to understand myself solely by things I had said and done. Now I know all of those things have things beneath them. Nothing I have said or done has been said or done in a vacuum.

All stories are preceded by stories. Too often we judge one another based on the stories we see, sometimes without ill-intent, because we can not see the stories that preceded those stories.

I told my friend that the most powerful part of ceasing to hate myself is it opened wide the door of possibility that God did not hate me either. I had always been taught that God loves me no matter what I've done, but that is very difficult to accept when YOU hate you because of all that you have done.

You come to know that God's greatest gift - God's greatest avenue to loving me - is knowing and understanding all the stories that came before the stories I once hated most about me. God lives inside those stories, with a loving embrace like no other, those stories I have sworn to secrecy.

Sworn to secrecy from God and others and mostly, myself.

The other powerful part of this journey: once you no longer hate yourself, and once you know that God truly does not hate you, all because he understands (which is not the same as excuses) the hardest parts of us - our most damaging choices and paths - it opens the door for us all to exchange our hatred of others for understanding of others.

I heard someone say at a conference this week, "we should meet others with compassion and empathy for stories we will likely never hear."

That, honestly, has been very challenging for me this week. People around me are making choices that are quite frankly impossible for me to excuse.

I've had to remind myself this week that my mission in life these days isn't about finding ways to excuse the things people say and do that I personally find inexcusable, my mission is to try to understand those things.

My mission is to try to understand that the stories that are challenging my life were preceded by stories that were challenging to those who are behaving in ways I have a hard time excusing.

I am better than ever at that mission because I came to understand there are many things in my life for which there are no excuses. But as God has reminded me, frequently, not one of those things is not open to his understanding.

Maybe the hardest part about understanding God is feeling that his love indeed transcends all the things that I have forever hated about me.

Maybe that is the hardest part about loving myself - and others - having a kind of love that transcends choices and behaviors that I hate.

I don't know that I will ever get there - at least not to the place God is with it. He is God for a reason.

But I know I am on the right track.

My friend asked me, "do you love yourself?"

I am still not entirely sure, but I AM entirely sure I no longer hate myself. And for me, that is a beautiful start. If I get no further than that, ever, it will be a more beautiful place to live than I could have ever imagined living.