Jesus gave us the great Commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first Commandment. The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22: 37 -39.) The three loves are intertwined, since the second is like the first, and the Big Phrase is - "as yourself." We have to love others as we love ourselves. And some of us hardly know how to love ourselves.
All of us have been traumatized in some way through the deliberate or careless unkindness and cruelty of others, a cruelty that can linger in our psyches, affecting our self-perception and self-confidence. It takes a lifetime to overcome such hurt; it takes courage to face the hurt and tell it that it is a lie. It also takes courage to believe that we are lovable and we are capable of loving God and others, and to act on that belief. For some, the hurt is much more difficult to face and overcome.
I know for a fact that this is true: in the beginning of our lives, our parents can make us or break us. My husband and I have held and consoled so many, many heart-wounded adults who were abused by their parents in their childhood and teens - physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, usually because of their parents' drug and alcohol abuse. We have held and consoled so many, many wounded adults who were traumatized by their parents' divorces. And how many are still traumatized as adults and dislike any Church because members of the clergy mistakenly, sometimes cruelly, told their mothers to stay with men who were abusive husbands and fathers?
How can we love God, a Parent, when our own parents have abused us severely? How can we call God specifically "Father" if our own father has sexually abused or raped us? How can we trust another in an intimate relationship when our parent or parents failed us and abandoned us over and over? How can we trust anyone to love us when we cannot love ourselves because we've been told and shown, over and over, how worthless we are? We can spend our whole lives bitter and angry while still yearning and hoping for the love of abusive family members.
Yet over and over my husband and I have seen the miracle of love grow quietly, subtly in people's lives, finally opening into beautiful blooms. People who have grown up in dysfunctional families find new families that truly love them and/or church families that truly love them. People terrified of intimacy find unconditional love in another who patiently, quietly, skillfully wins his or her trust. God is Love, and God is hidden but at work in all these relationships, healing, rebuilding, renewing broken hearts and battered souls.
Often enough, we discover God through the love of other human beings. The friendship of an adult male can rebuild a woman's trust in a God Who is Father. The friendship of an adult woman can rebuild trust in a God Who is also our Mother. The intimate love of whole and holy friends and families can prepare someone for the deeper intimacy of a love relationship that leads to marriage.
When you have been abused, any type of step forward into relationship is a huge psychic risk. Yet once you are courageous enough to take that step, God is ready to support you, whether you have discovered God yet or not. Because every time you step forward into love, you are stepping forward into God, Who is Love. The more steps you take, the more you discover there is a solid ground of love beneath your feet, the more your heart is able to open a crack, be carefully ajar, to accept the Presence of God. The more God is able to enter, the more you are able to be healed and transformed.
Openness to the Scriptures, often first offered to us by people whom we are beginning to trust, can help us discover a God Who will always be faithful to us, who will always be there, day and night, when we need God's presence, Who loves us unconditionally. And this God is so powerful in reaching out to us! God can and will act even through our act of opening a Bible in a motel room!
If you have been abused, and you grow depressed, when the memory of past relationships still has the power to blight your happiness, throw you back into self-hatred and self-doubt, please remember that you have been created specifically, that God created you out of love, and God has a purpose for your life. Our God is called "I Am" because God is with you Now and has been with you during every moment of your life. God brought you through the tough years of abuse, through every traumatic experience you've had. God will continue to heal you through prayer - your time spent in God's presence. God will continue to heal you through God's words of love in Scripture. God will continue to heal you through every loving relationship you allow into your life.
The three loves are completely intertwined, because the more deeply we love in any of these relationships we have - with ourselves, with God, with others, - the deeper our capacity for love grows in the other areas. Our prayer daily can be opening ourselves up to allow God ever more deeply into ourselves, into those dark hidden areas that we despise - so God can heal us for the joy of loving ourselves more deeply - and the joy of a deeper love for God and others.