As I’ve been reading from CS Lewis’ works, the concept of truly loving God has been on my mind.  The only way to find real joy and return to our Father in Heaven is through loving him and submitting ourselves entirely unto Him, and so I’ve been looking at my own testimony a little more skeptically.  I know that God loves me with an amazing love that I am still trying to fully understand, and I see evidence of God’s love for me in all aspects of my life, but how do I truly love Him as deeply and as unconditionally as He loves me?  In Mere Christianity, there is a chapter on forgiveness that discusses how we are to love others.  It is often hard to look past a person’s actions and love them for who they are.  But if we look at how we love ourselves, we can understand this process a little better.  We all make mistakes and we never measure up to what we want to become, but even though we hate those mistakes we know that we can improve.  We pick ourselves back up.  We just keep loving ourselves (in a non-conceited way).  In pondering the way we love ourselves, we can understand how we are to love others and more importantly, how God loves us.  He is eager to forgive us and help us move forward, and he knows our divine potential.  He simply loves us for who we are.  If we can see others through a divine perspective and recognize that mistakes are part of mortality, we can learn to love as God does.  So how do we love God “with all our might, mind, and strength”? Through humble prayer, studying His word, and obeying His commandments, we can come to know of His love.  When we submit our will to His, we are immersed in His love, and He will in turn teach us how to love.  I still do not understand this concept completely, but I think that by learning how to love our fellow man, as well as ourselves, through His love, love will naturally become a part of who we are.