How do I love myself? It begins, I think, with both forgiveness and acceptance. A kind of radical grace.

My inner judge has been administering psychic lashes to my sense of self for a very long time. It whips me with guilt over choices I made that hurt others. It whips me with shame over my lack of great accomplishment or success. My inner judge isn’t kind or understanding, it’s mean and heartless. I have given it immense joy-robbing power.

It’s time to dethrone that jerk.

I recognize that he beats me with the past. He likes to trot out every version of me from the past—clutching the dread weight of all my poor decisions—and point out what a pathetic loser this person is, how deserving of derision and condemnation.

I don’t have to buy into this evaluation. Instead, I can have compassion and empathy for Past Me. What kinds of pain was I experiencing, what kinds of hurt was I suppressing, when I made those unwise choices?

Most of the things we do, most of the things we choose not to do, have to do with protecting ourselves. Even if we’re hurting ourselves (through isolation or addiction or avoidance), we are generally doing it because we are afraid of doing the “right” thing, the “healthy” thing. We don’t want to inflict hurt on ourselves or others, we are simply acting out of fear and insecurity. Often it has to do with childhood trauma.

When you watch someone you love hurting themselves, you don’t want to heap guilt on them, you want to lift them out of the darkness with words and actions of hope and encouragement.

I want to see Past Me through the eyes of profound caring.

I want to come alongside Past Me and hug him. Tell him I love him, accept him, and forgive him. Just as he is. Even in the midst of his worst moments. He was acting out of brokenness, lostness.

Love heals.

This is a rewriting. A re-envisioning.

There I am, Present Me, walking alongside Past Me, giving him assurance, grace, and unconditional, redemptive love. In many ways, this idea mirrors what I’ve always understood to be the nature of Christianity’s God.

My spiritual disposition is a little odd right now. I’m not quite a Christian, yet I’m not quite not a Christian. This might amuse, confuse, or alarm some of you. You may be thinking, “Either you are or you aren’t. You can’t be sort of a Christian.”

 Agree to disagree. I am not at all convinced of the infallibility of the bible. I can’t say I know for sure that Jesus was a human manifestation of the creator, a representation of the One True God. I question that the biblical narrative of his life is entirely accurate or true. I’m inclined to highly doubt that the authors of the bible intended that its stories be taken as literal truth. (I was raised to believe these things, but I can’t see them as indisputable, immutable truths at this point in my life.) I see these teachings and stories now as representing truths about being human, truths about what matters in life, guideposts about how to view our place in the cosmos—not historical descriptions of literal events.

 Yet, I believe in a personal God. A God who is love. A God who redeems, saves that which is lost. A God who can be prayed to, who wants to be connected to us. I still use the language of Christianity when I pray, even as I admit I don’t really understand exactly what God is or how God operates. I don’t believe anyone does. People accept the definitions of God given to them by their religions because it’s one way to make sense of the incomprehensible, one way to access the inaccessible. God is the One Thing from which All Things come. That thing must be conscious, sentient, intelligent. (This is just my BS. I don’t ask you to accept it.) For me, it’s a cause-and-effect issue. Life comes from life, spirit from spirit. So, I pray like a Christian, even though I wouldn’t call myself a Christian (except in the loosest, most abstract sense).

My point is that this idea of Present Me forgiving Past Me, letting him off the hook, loving him with perfect, redemptive love—this is clearly analogous to the love of biblical Jesus. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I mean, in this story, men are putting him to death, and he is advocating for their forgiveness. It’s a beautiful picture of total forgiveness for an unforgivable, unjust act of cruelty. Perfect love, perfect grace, total forgiveness.

We hurt others out of ignorance, fear, and insecurity—the same conditions under which we hurt ourselves.

Me to Me: “I forgive you. You didn’t know what you were doing. Feel free, now, to love yourself, your mind, body, and soul. Feel free to love others, to love life. Be entirely free, my brother, my friend, myself.”

Amen.