The ultimate issue isn’t whether people deserve your negative thoughts; certainly many people do. The more important point is that they are your thoughts in your head, and you want them to be as beneficial to you as possible. We cannot appreciate and feel devalued at the same time. As long as you appreciate, you will not feel devalued, and you’ll eventually soar above.
— Steven Stosny, Soar Above, p. 113
Forgiveness is so difficult because it involves death and grief. I had been looking for patterns in people extending generosity and love, but not in people feeling grief. At that moment it struck me: Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the willingness to embrace grief in order to forgive. To be forgiven is to be loved.
The death or ending that forgiveness necessitates comes in many shapes and forms. We may need to bury our expectations or dreams. We may need to relinquish the power that comes with “being right” or put to rest the idea that we can do what’s in our hearts and still retain the support or approval of others.
— Brené Brown, Rising Strong, p. 150
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” If we are angry at God because of something that happened to us or because of something going on in the world, and we are reluctant to admit our anger either because it seems disrespectful or because we fear that God will punish us for being angry at Him, we won’t be able to “love God with all our heart.” We can only love him halfheartedly. The wife who is afraid to tell her husband how bothered she is by some of his habits, for fear that he will be upset with her and perhaps even leave her, will not be able to love him wholeheartedly, and that inability will affect their relationship. The adolescent who is scolded for being angry at his parents “after all we’ve done for you,” or whose hopes and dreams are mocked by his parents, will learn to keep his feelings to himself. That will be an impediment to his being able to love his parents as wholeheartedly as he would like to.
Accepting anger, ours and that of people close to us, has to be part of any honest relationship. If the opposite of faith is not doubt but despair, then the opposite of authentic love, wholehearted love, is not anger but pretense, censoring our feelings. I don’t believe God is fooled by that, nor do I believe that is what He wants from us. God will accept our anger, justified or not, so that we can then go on to love Him “with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might.”
— Harold S. Kushner, Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life, p. 129-130.
Self-acceptance is the first step to holiness. But for many the path to self-acceptance can be arduous. Men, women, and children in ethnic or social minorities, with physical disabilities, with dysfunctional family backgrounds, with addictions, or those who feel unattractive, uneducated or undesirable may struggle for many years before accepting themselves as beloved children of God.
But the journey is essential. Many gay men and lesbians, for example, have told me that the real beginning of their spiritual path was accepting themselves as gay men and women — that is, the way that God made them. Coming to see themselves in this way, and, more important, allowing God to love them as they are, not as society might want them to be, or think they should be, is an important step in their relationship with God.
“For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb,” says Psalm 139. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” God loves us as we are because that’s how God made us.
— James Martin, S. J., The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, p. 380-381.
God is not a betrayer — he does not betray and he has never betrayed me.
Because unanswered prayer that was urgent and beyond precious to you can feel like a knife to the heart. The enemy rushes in with feelings of betrayal; he whispers terrible things about God in our vulnerability. It is never, ever true. But sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
— John Eldredge, Moving Mountains, p. 217
But what happens when life presents you with unavoidable or overwhelming suffering? This is where the example of the Jesuit approach to obedience may be helpful. What enables a Jesuit to accept difficult decisions by his superior is the same thing that can help you: the realization that this is what God is inviting you to experience at this moment. It is the understanding that somehow God is with you, at work and revealed in a new way in this experience.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that God wills suffering or pain. Nor that any of us will ever fully understand the mystery of suffering. Nor that you need to look at every difficulty as God’s will. Some suffering should be avoided, lessened, or combated: treatable illnesses, abusive marriages, unhealthy work situations, dysfunctional sexual relationships.
Nonetheless, Ciszek understood that God invites us to accept the inescapable realities placed in front of us. We can either turn away from that acceptance of life and continue on our own, or we can plunge into the “reality of the situation” and try to find God there in new ways. Obedience in this case means accepting reality.
— James Martin, S. J., The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, p. 282-283.
Humility is about refusing to get all tangled up with yourself. It’s about surrender, receptivity, awareness, simplicity. Breathing in. Breathing out.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 132
Guilt is a place where we have made a monument to a mistake and left the path of life to worship at this monument. It has us withdraw and then withholds us from the people we love. We may feel we have made a mistake in relation to our partner and now feel guilty about it, but guilt not only reinforces the mistake, it starves our partner of the very love and nurturing they need. Forgiving ourselves cuts through the guilt and allows us to give the love and nurturing. Guilt keeps us stuck like the great superglue of life; the primary reason for our guilt is so we don’t have to move forward and face the next step. Our willingness to allow the next step to emerge cuts through fear in much the same way that forgiveness cuts through guilt.
— Chuck Spezzano, If It Hurts, It Isn’t Love, p. 54
Acceptance has everything to do with simplicity, with sitting in the ordinary place, with bearing witness to the plain facts of our lives, with not just starting at the essential, but ending up there. Acceptance speaks in the gentlest voice. It commands only that we acknowledge what’s true.
— Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough, p. 127
Is this love or am I trying to change the person I love?
Have you tried to change your partner recently? How did you get on? Were they suitably appreciative? I imagine you didn’t get a thank-you note for your efforts. Have you tried to change your children? Were they receptive? Did it work this time? Children are willing learners, except when they don’t feel loved. Have you tried to change your parents again? After all, they’re getting older now and so they should be weaker and less able to resist your campaign. Has anyone tried to change you recently? How did you feel about that? Did you feel more loved? Are you feeling even more love for that person who wants to change you?
A common mistake in relationships is the belief that your love will change a person, eventually. You can’t love someone and want him or her to change. For a start, when you try to change people, they do not feel loved by you. If anything, they feel judged and rejected. Love does not seek to change people, because love does not find any fault in a person’s true essence. Love can help a person to grow and to bring out the best in him or her; but you will not see any of this if you do not love the person unconditionally in the first place. The paradox of love is that when you stop wanting each other to change, you are changed, and this change enables you to love each other more.
— Robert Holden, Loveability, p. 150-151