Three Wishes. No, Four. OK, Maybe Just One...

"Forgiveness is not much of a concept without something for which to forgive and be forgiven. Healing has no meaning in the absence of illness. Peace is no treasure at all to those who have known no war and no strife. Saying hello has no joy in it without the saying of good-bye."
--Robert Benson

I have three wishes for myself.

I would really like to stop being so damned hard on myself. I’m so tired of it, and it’s just not working for me anymore. The payoff I used to get (of getting to be the victim) isn’t something I want anymore, even in the short term. So now, it’s just painful.

You’d think that would be easy to change, right? Well, it’s proving to be a little more challenging than I originally thought. I’m not sure how to work hard and live my life well in an entirely positive way, where I’m not beating myself up at every turn. What I’m afraid of is that I’ll slip into lazy-ville. It’s so easy to do, after all. If I’m not working hard, then I must be lazy.

Extremes… black and white… don’t exist in reality. Life is colorful and yes, there is even gray mixed in as well.

So how do I find the balance?

After all, this is a life-long habit I’m trying to break.

The other thing I’d like to do is directly related to not being so hard on myself. I’d really like to state an intention, and then once I recognize that intention as feeling right and good—follow through with it.

No more balking, no more fear, no more hem-hawing, no more doubting myself, no more trash-talking myself and/or my abilities or worse—my self worth, no more not trusting me.

In other words—I want to cut the drama and just do it.

You might have ascertained by now that I’m what’s referred to as a bit of a “head case”, meaning I spend a lot of time analyzing myself, my actions, my inactions, my thoughts, my feelings, etc.

In fact, and I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but the rather amazing therapist I saw last year during the heat of the divorce said I’m the most self-analytical person she’d ever met.

That… says a lot coming from a therapist.

So, getting out of my own head is not only something I want, it’s something I need. It’s something I absolutely crave.

Yoga helps me with this. If I’m not fully present during a class, then I can’t do any of the poses. I can’t even come close. And the only time I can even attempt yoga at home is when I’m fully present.

What I’m noticing, though, is that I also really limit myself. Yoga practice has really brought that to the forefront of my awareness. I’ll sometimes automatically swear off a pose just because I don’t think I can do it.

So, the third thing I’d like for myself is to kick my self-imposed limits to the curb. I’d like to set myself free from the bondage and chains I’ve put myself in.

I’ve worked really hard on all three things over the past year and a half, in big areas of my life. And I’ve done well with shedding fear, limits, and being overly critical of myself in big, important ways.

It's the day-to-day where I need a little work. What I’ve recognized is that the habits of succumbing to fear, being overly critical of myself, and limiting myself, are well-engrained in me. And, like anything, a lifetime of practice doing something a certain way is not broken with a single monumental action to the counter. After that action, it takes diligence, practice, and effort.

And, one other very important ingredient…

Grace.

Most of all, I would like to learn how to give myself grace…

“Grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it.”
 - Yrjo Kallinen 

“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.”
 - Saint Francis of Assisi

So, how exactly am I going to do that, you ask?

In the great words of Philip Henslowe, as quoted from one of my favorite movies, Shakespeare in Love: "I don't know. It's a mystery."

Loving Me, Even When It's Hard

With every bit of progress comes the slightest ease into comfort. At that moment, I know I'm about to be stretched again...

I felt angry all day yesterday, and it was actually in a writing session with a client late in the afternoon when I realized why I was angry.

I’ve spent all this time trying to figure out how to let love in… what love really means to me… and what I realized is that fear still has a tight hold on me when it comes to love.

And now I understand why…

When I was a little girl, there was a lot of turmoil in my house—some of it caused by my sister and a lot of the behavior she engaged in. My sister, being 8 years older than I am, made a lot of mistakes as a teenager. To compensate for that, I tried to be perfect.

That set a precedent, because then it seemed like my family started to expect me to be perfect.

If I wasn’t perfect, my perception was that I wasn’t loved. But if I did everything just right, if I was perfect—then I would be rewarded with love.

That’s a classic codependent mindset, and I’ve worked hard to shake that. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it, until it hit me that I still do this to myself.

If I am not perfect, if I do not act perfectly, if I don’t do everything I want to do (and everything I “should” do) perfectly, then I don’t get love. I don’t get to love myself… I don’t honor and nurture myself, I don’t get to have the good that comes from allowing love into my heart.

In other words—I don’t actually know how to love myself when it’s hard, like when I screw up, or when I am not perfect.

How often are you not perfect? All the time? Every day? Every moment?

Yeah.

So it goes deeper than that, even… because when I’m spilled open—like I am right now, tears streaming down my face as I write—I realize that I actually do love myself. In the moments when I am vulnerable, honest, and real, how can I not love myself? I know in those moments that I am beautiful, worthy, and accepted.

It’s only when I’m trying to force my own hand, trying to be perfect, trying to do it my way (in Pathways terms, “running my numbers”), that I realize I withhold love from myself, until I do it perfectly, and if I can’t do it perfectly, then I somehow manage to love myself a little less..

In the past couple of years, I feel that God has been teaching me how to accept love—from others. First, I had to accept His love. Then I had to learn how to accept it from family… and then friends…  from myself… and finally—a romantic partner.

The big missing piece is how to love myself when it’s hard. When whatever I’m doing doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, when I’m not happy with my behavior, or when I’m not doing something I know I should be doing—in other words, when I’m absolutely imperfect. I'm so quick to beat myself up, which of course plummets me further down the hole. 

That is my challenge, and tonight, it’s a big one.

But, as they say… awareness is the first step. And I got a big ol’ dose of awareness today, that’s for sure.

Words I heard about a year ago spring to mind right now:

“God made me. God doesn’t make mistakes. I am perfectly imperfect.”

Yes, indeed…

I want to teach myself how to love me, even when it's hard. I want to notice the progress I've made, how much sooner I become aware, and then, for crying out loud... move forward. 

Life is just too damn short to beat myself up all the time...

"I'll never finish, so why begin?
...I must be crazy to beat me
I'm letting it go"
  - from "Speak" by Gary Go

I don't know what it looks like or feels like to give myself grace. But now, I want to find out.

On Extending Grace

I heard this yesterday, as part of a liturgy from a congregation to new church members:

"We will not act as though you have to earn your way in."

Beautiful... it touched my heart in a significant way regarding a situation I’m currently going through, that I am not at liberty to talk about here, but this got me thinking…

How hard do you make it for people to earn their way into your company, your organization, your circle of friends, your family, your life, your heart?

What if grace came first, followed closely by support and trust?

How judgmental are you of the actions, attitudes, emotions, situations, history, and words of others?

How would it feel to engage the world with more grace, more love, more openness?

These are things that a single statement made me think about. I have come to realize that I’ve been judgmental of a close friend of mine, for some mistakes and bad choices he has made in the past. I’ve been working hard to make him earn his way back into my life, and it hit me yesterday that he deserves my grace.

I’ve screwed up, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve done a bad job at some things, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, a bad woman, a bad volunteer, a bad employee, a bad human.

It just means I am not a robot, and I don’t have it all figured out, and that’s kind of what living is all about, isn’t it?

So, I ask you… on this, Martin Luther King, Jr. day of celebration and reflection: where can you extend more grace?

Who do you feel least deserves grace?

Chances are, that’s the person who needs it most.