My Toughest Critic

[what's brewing: leave room for grace]

First of all, thank you for your gracious responses to my confession this past week. While failing to get things done is nowhere on my list of enjoyable experiences, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the relief I found in simply acknowledging my oversight and apologizing. No scrambling to recover. No rush to get something in as I would have if I’d remembered in the middle of the night. Simply taking responsibility and then letting it go.

I didn’t realize how un-like me it was to experience that type of relief until I read Kimom’s comment about being brave enough to not just take responsibility for our failures but then to forgive ourselves, without holding onto guilt.

It’s true – forgiving myself is one of my greatest challenges.

It is far easier for me to forgive others for their failures than to forgive myself. I extend much more grace to others than I am able to give myself (which is probably why I end up running myself ragged and forgetting things like writing my weekly blog post!).

I am indeed my own toughest critic.

In thinking about Kimom’s comment, I realize that I tend to think of Christ’s sacrifice as covering the serious offenses, the deep wounds and the grievous sins that we carry around. I don’t think of the little things or the general inability to perform at levels of perfection that I somehow think I need to.

And this reveals the real source I am going to for my strength to accomplish all that is on my plate, whether by choice or by circumstance: myself.

I rely on my ability to multi-task, maximize efficiency, and manage my time far more than I rely upon the grace and goodness of God. Ultimately, I know that each breath is a gift from God and therefore my ability to do anything is dependent on His sustaining grace; but practically, I rely upon my own abilities to get so many things done. Self-reliance makes it especially hard to do anything but blame myself when things don’t go as I’d planned.

As novel as these thoughts seem to be, they are all too familiar. I’ve had similar realizations in the past; I’ve wrestled with the idea of extending grace to myself in recent years. And yet this all feels so new. It’s similar to the surprise I feel when I am so encouraged by a verse I hear or read somewhere that I go to find it in my own Bible, only to see I have underlined it myself previously.

Last week I was glad to find I’m not the only one who drops the ball and then wants to give excuses for why it happened. This week I’m wondering if anyone other than Kimom and myself struggle to extend forgiveness to yourself, whether for great things or small. And I’m wondering how you deal with it.

Any thoughts? Pour yourself a cup of coffee and let’s talk.