I am beginning to truly understand God’s grace more as I am working through giving myself grace.
God gave me a great growth opportunity this past week. I woke up early to go workout and I couldn’t find my pink wireless headphones. So, I started tracing my steps, checking every coat, sweat shirt, and pants pockets that I could have possibly worn. I nailed down the last time I had them and worked through the last moment I remembered holding them in my hands. I can’t figure out the next steps after that.
I was bummed. I went to the college gym where I work out and asked the front desk if anyone had turned any in. I checked every locker that I use, every machine I could have been on. You get the point, I was going to find them. But, I didn’t.
I was super bummed. I couldn’t work out. I couldn’t lift weights. I was mad at myself.
As I drove home from the gym I wasn’t thinking the best thoughts. Thoughts like:
We don’t lose things. What were you thinking? Those were expensive. I loved having my own pair of wireless headphones, and now I can’t. Did someone find them and just take them? Why were you so careless? See, I told you we can’t have nice things. How will you learn? You think this is okay? Why did you do this?
I walked in the door exhausted, not from my workout… but from the beat down I was giving myself.
See, truth be told. If my husband would have lost his headphones, I would have been mad at him. So, I had to be mad at me. I couldn’t just let it go. I walked in the door defeated, and he wasn’t the least bit upset.
He said, “It happens, things get lost sometime, don’t worry about it.” Which made me even more mad. I thought, “This doesn’t happen to me, I don’t lose things!” Also, “This is not OKAY!”
He could tell I wanted to beat myself up. I did want to beat myself. I felt like I deserved punishment. He wasn’t “punishing me” by being mad at me, so I just had to self inflict the punishment. It was like I thought that if I got mad at myself and beat myself up then I wouldn’t do it again. You know, make another mistake. Lose something. Misplace something. Be human.
I came face to face with my humanness. I am human and sometimes humans make mistakes. I don’t like that.
God knew this. He knew we would sin, He knew we would make mistakes. He knew we would lose something, break something, not keep it ALL together. He knew our humanness. The problem is I don’t want to believe that. I want to be better than that.
So, here I was with this dilemma on my hands and just feeling plain awful. I decided to work through it. I asked myself a lot of good questions and it all boiled down to this. Yes, I may have misplaced them and I may find them someday, but at this point I don’t know where they are. How do I want to think about that? I want to believe that it is okay. That I am okay. That losing something doesn’t mean I am a horrible person. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I can let myself off the hook, by showing myself grace and saying, it’s okay. Covering over this with love may actually lead me to not doing it again. I thought beating myself up would work to make me not do it again, but is there an upside to doing that?
God was saying to me, “Hey I put you here on Earth to teach you so much. Here is an opportunity to extend to yourself the love and grace that I would extend to you. Will you do that for me?”
Wow, accepting my own grace was even hard. I had to say listen God has given you grace here, you are okay to accept that. I am giving you grace as well, it is okay to accept it.
I am learning how to love myself better and giving myself grace is a huge piece of it. I am amazed because as I am walking this out in my life it is affecting my relationships with others. As I am seeing my humanness I am able to see others humanness as well and can meet them there at a common ground.
Oh, yes, we are both humans, doing the best we can.
Here’s to a grace-filled week,
Angie
P.S. The next time my husband or anyone for that matter, loses something I know I will be so much more gracious!
