Just as I Am

Just as I am

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Mark 20:31

There are parts of myself

  I despise

    and wish they were not me.

Every day

  they make me aware

    they are there.

I struggle

    to believe

      God loves me with them

        and not despite them.

If He loves me that way,

   will I ever learn

     to love myself

      as He does,

whole and entire,

  with warts and foibles and scars

  and traces of decay?

The Spirit helped me understand

    that wholeness

      does not equal perfection;

        it is

        the totality of my life

                  as I am,

        here and now

                  as I am,

        passionately loved

          by God

                  as I am.

Until I can hold myself

     all together

      in love,

I will keep dividing others

     into parts to love

     and parts to unlove,

just as I regard myself

 on dark clouded days:

and there I am,

     back where

this poem began.