To Love Ourselves as We Love Our Neighbor

Last week, I saw this quote on Facebook: 

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it."

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

I wrote this response:  "It's hard work to love myself that way too--not as someone I have to fix, change, help, save."

I was so intrigued by this quote that I did the research to find out that it comes from An Altar in the World, which I've read several times and loved.  I thought about reading the whole book again, but I've lost that motivation along the way--although Thanksgiving break is coming, so perhaps I'll pull it off the shelf again.

I did read the paragraphs around the quote, just to see if reading it in a wider context gave me further insight, but no, the quote works similarly, whether standing by itself or in the larger context of the book.

I have always had a hard time loving myself.  I'm much tougher on myself than I am on others.  I am much more willing to give others the benefit of the doubt.  I don't treat others as an improvement project, but I can give you many lists of ways that I would like to be a more improved version of myself.

I know that many of us need to do more to love others as we love ourselves, but so many of us have a more essential task:  to love ourselves as the way God loves us.