"Good Enough" and the Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I always took this verse to mean that I needed to serve others more than myself. In my younger days, I would sometimes take it to an extreme of being a martyr or an ascetic. I sometimes thought I should be less feeling and more of a doormat for people.

As I've grown in my faith and in my work as a counselor, however, I've realized that the way I feel about myself affects how I treat others. When I feel less than, not good enough, or down, I am less likely to see the needs of others. I feel less love in my heart. I am more irritable and easily angered. I am susceptible to anxiety. I perceive the actions of others toward me as more negative. I tend to be unforgiving and bitter.

Conversely, when I know who I am in Christ, when I accept my identity as a beloved child of God for whom Christ died, I have more love in my heart for others. I forgive more easily. I am happier and more able to spread joy. I can serve better.

I'm not promoting self-aggrandizing pride or narcissism or egoism, but I am challenging myself to consider where I'm at when I don't like how I'm interacting with others. Often, I need to examine my heart to see what's internally wrong and resulting in externally wrong actions. I need to ask Christ to ground my heart and cleanse me of my sin. I need to ask for Holy Spirit power to forgive myself. I need to feel God's love so I can give it to others.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." 

For me, that means treating myself with the care that Christ does, so that I can then go out into the world and treat others as close to how Christ would treat them as I can. I'm a perfectionist, but certainly not perfect, after all. This is why the way I treat myself needs to be grounded in my God-given identity, not in how "good enough" I feel on any given day.

Grace in a Broken Cup

I broke Dad's favorite coffee cup, like the one he uses every day. It was an accident! I'd washed the cup and left it drying on a tine of the dish rack. When I tried to pull it off to put it away, it slipped out of my hands and fell into the cast iron sink. Voila! The cup went into two large pieces and a thousand tiny shards.

When I told Dad what I'd done, he was like, "The cup I use every day?"

I was like, "Yeah, the black one."

"Oh well." That was all he said. He could condemned me, gotten upset, berated me, or even asked me to replace the cup (which I later did, because I wanted to), but he didn't. He let it go.

I, on the other hand, had a hard time letting go. I questioned what I could have and should have done differently. I was tired and exhausted and needed to go to bed, but found myself wanting to do penance. I wanted to order a new cup right then, or read extra Bible verses, or somehow otherwise punish myself. But I realized I had a choice. I could beat myself up or forgive myself. I could move on, or or I could stay stuck. I chose to move on.

I took my shower that night, read the newspaper, ate my snack, and went to bed as per usual routine. I woke up the next morning and ordered a new cup that not coincidentally said on it, "Best Dad Ever." And life went on.

Being shown grace necessitates that I show it to others, even to myself. Dad's grace wouldn't have done much good had I not it to myself. And I wouldn't know grace had I no need for it. Perhaps grace flows best through broken vessels.

I'm linking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons for this Thinking Out Loud post. 

I'm SO Tired...

I'm SO tired. 

How do I know? Besides physical symptoms of yawning and general malaise, there are some other common markers for me:

• It takes more time to get out of bed in the morning.
• I cease reading my Bible on a regular basis.
• My runs are slower.
• I spend WAY too much time on social media.
• I look to food for comfort and emotionally eat.
• I don't go to bed on time, often due to the two aforementioned issues.
• I'm cranky and irritable.
• I lack creativity.

I can be angry with myself about these things, or I can give myself grace. I can recognize my signs of tiredness and start thanking my brain and body for them. Now's not the time for shame or blame or guilt. Now's the time for addressing the issue.

Imperfection

Remember that post I wrote on self-forgiveness? Yeah, I'm having to practice that a lot. I'm having to face my imperfections.

I've always been a perfectionist (like in high school I would rip pages out of my notebook and rewrite them if I made a mistake). I thought I was getting better, caring less about the perfect, and more about the pure, good, and lovely things of life (Phil 4:8). But God's been showing me lately that I still have a long way to go.

Like I've always been a regimented exerciser. I try to follow a pretty strict schedule, and most of the time, it's worked for me. But lately, I've been tired. My body has hurt. So I've been taking time off walking with mom (saving cardio for runs to train for Pat's Run) doing yoga instead of weights, etc. I've felt lazy sometimes, but my body has thanked me by holding up for my runs.

Then there's the whole matter of training for Pat's Run. When I run, I run 3 miles, and a "hard" race is 5K. Now I'm taking on 4.2 miles. It's not that much further...but it is. I was "on schedule" with training, and then suddenly realized I was a week off. And that upset me. It wasn't that I didn't think I could do the next, harder week, but that I'd missed a week. I wanted to follow the schedule.

My eating is still all over the place. Like Tuesday night, there wasn't dinner at Bible study (I thought there would be), so I had a package of Nature's Valley peanut butter chocolate granola cups to tide me over. When I got home, I had a bowl of chocolate applesauce almond butter oatmeal (based off this recipe) and a TON of cereal. And I felt kind of sick afterwards, but I was so hungry.

And then there's chores around the house. I usually help my mom clean the bathroom on Wednesdays, and this Wednesday, I totally forgot, which meant she did it all. She was gracious with me, but I felt terrible!

So yeah, I'm pretty much imperfect. I don't have my life together. I fail at lots of things. And I'm human. A human in need of a perfect Savior. A perfect Savior who paid the perfect price for all my sins so that I can forgive myself...and others...for being imperfect.

On Blogging and Self-Forgiveness

I've read a few posts lately about pursuing passions in the blogosphere. In It For the Long Run's post "On Growing and Letting Go" especially resonated with me. I enjoyed blogging about oatmeal for a month, but let me be honest and say it was a little stressful. Creating new bowls, writing up the recipes, photographing them, dealing with bad photos, etc. was stressful. I tried submitting some of my recipes to Food Gawker and they turned down the recipes. Healthy Aperture turned down quite a few, too. Most of my photos had "lighting issues." Guess what? I'm not a photographer. Maybe I could learn to take better photos, but that's not where my heart is at. My heart is to share my heart. Expect more of that here.

So in that vein, God's been teaching me a lot about self-forgiveness. I've always been a perfectionist, but lately that monster has been rearing its head in new places. Like I've been beating myself up for not figuring out AdSense for Blogger. (Tips anyone?) I spent several hours on it one Saturday and got so angry that I "wasted" my time. But you know what? I tried. I failed. And I had to learn to get up and go on and not let that ruin my day. (I went to the kitchen and cooked and baked a bunch and that made me feel more accomplished and satisfied. Cooking is therapeutic.)

The same goes with eating. I've tried to be a healthy eater, to listen to my body, to eat intuitively, for so many years. And lately, I've been eating so much at night. I was judging myself, being angry at myself, etc., but God's been softening that response in me. Intuitive eating isn't a perfect process. A lot of it is about letting go and stopping the good/bad labels.
And I've not been super efficient at work lately, but the goal is to have a track record of doing my job, and doing a good job. I can do that even if I have some inefficient days where I end up texting a friend for an hour or running around like a chicken and not accomplishing anything.

All this comes back to self-forgiveness: letting go, letting be, and choosing to be resilient. The ability to do these things is rooted in my identity as God's child. God created me. He loves me. He forgives me. He cleanses me. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). If God can forgive me and move on, I can certainly forgive myself.