Loving Others Well ... including the Neighbor's Dog

I took advantage that it wasn't raining and I went for a walk early in the morning.  I love walking.  It allows me to think and to pray.  I was uttering a silent prayer: "Please, Lord, help me love others well..." when, I lift up my eyes only to see a huge German Shepherd charging toward me!  His deep, coarse bark shook my core.  I've always been terrified of dogs!  For a second, I was paralyzed.  Then, I turned around and started walking back the way I came.  I could hear the dog still coming toward me.  I knew my approach was not the best, but I was saved from my stupidity by the dog's owner who called him and made him stop before he got super close to me. 

I never looked back.  I kept walking, hoping my shaky legs would hold me all the way home.

The thing is that, instead of praising God for bringing the dog's owner out to my rescue, I cursed the poor woman!  I had only harsh thoughts in my mind toward my neighbors and their very scary dog.  I even thought about writing a nasty letter of complaint to the Home Owners' Association!  And I can assure you, none of the words in my imagined note spelled L O V E...

Sigh...

How quickly had I fallen off the love wagon again?  As soon as the slightest inconvenience popped up (though, it could be argued that today's inconvenience was, indeed, rather large!), I became my old angry-selfish, unloving self...again...

I don't know how to love my neighbors well.  Literally!

Jesus seems to give two prescriptions for how to love others:
1.   “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."  (John 13: 34)

2.   “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12: 29-31)

From where I stand, I detect also two complications:
1.  How would I ever be able to love like Jesus loves?
2.  How can I love others the way I love me, when I do such a poor job loving myself?

Sigh...

Well, the way I see it, this could only be done by the Power of the Holy Spirit in me.  There is no way I can love others well without the guidance and fuel of the Heavenly Helper directing my every step and emotion.

Love lives in me because God is Love!  And, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4: 9-10)

It is not my love.  It is His love what needs to pour out of me and into those who I encounter in my walk.  Therefore, when Jesus says to love one another the same way that He has loved us, what I need to do is to open up the chambers of my heart so His love, which came into me first, could flow out into the world.  It is not my love I have to concoct.  It is Jesus' love I have to share!

And I do love myself, because He lives in me, and He is love, so even in my imperfect way of loving, I demonstrate His perfect and unique love for me by loving myself!

I'm not sure I understand what I'm saying.  All I know is that I pray to the Holy Spirit to make His love overflow and spill out into those whom He has placed as my neighbors...including their unruly and scary dogs!