Those who love you unconditionally build up your store of graces and genuine love. Those who use you to their selfish ends siphon your energy to love unconditionally. The former are your true family; the latter are the people to reach out for your ministry.
A heart that loves purely, when corrupted by selfishness and perversion, will find it difficult, even almost impossible, to recapture that pure love. The heart needs to go through that moment of letting go, the pain of fiery grace, a conversion of soul, before it can be restored to that state where it is ready to love purely again.
Little acts of selfishness erode our capability to truly love. Eventually we discover ourselves knowing nothing but loving ourselves, and forgetting how to truly love others the way they should be loved.
To be of peace, a person must renounce the option towards violence. Self-defense becomes a search for means to subdue violence without using force that destroys the attacker. To be in peace, a person must renounce the voices of arrogance and selfishness that destroys the tranquility of the soul. Instead, he lets the peace-giving presence of God consume his soul each moment each day for the rest of his life.