The more I have looked at my own life honestly, the more convinced I am that a lot of misery can be traced from the mistaken notion: we need to be perfect for people to love us. The worst feeling that can come into us is the notion that we don't deserve to be loved and nothing generates that conviction more certainly than the idea that when we do something wrong, we give reason to people and God not to love us. One doesn't need to be perfect. God does not hold us to strict standards of right or wrong. Even for the nastiest of things we do, we are still loved by God.
