I am learning that mutual love is the most healing kind of love.

My spiritual director once caught me in the act of putting myself down for something, some inadequacy, some imperfection I had started digging at to get rid of. She asked me to imagine a baby bird sitting in a nest in my hands. She asked me to look at that baby bird and tell her what I saw.

“A baby bird,” was my response, but it wasn’t the answer to the question she was really asking.

“Is the bird imperfect?” she asked. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“No,” I replied. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a baby bird.”

“Then how come a baby bird can be born so perfectly the way it should be, but you can’t?”

I have sat with this image and embraced its lesson whenever I discover that I am…