Treat Yourself Like a Visitor

A visitor comes to our home and has an accident. Let's say they make a mistake and knock over a soda onto the carpet. Typically, we tell them not to worry. We don't berate them for a simple accident. We clean up the mess for them; we assure them all is well. Now imagine this scenario with your child, your significant other, even yourself-- are you still as patient, as kind, as reassuring? Why do visitors and strangers get our best versions of this experience?

Extend grace to yourself.

Grace is a disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency: a temporary exemption : REPRIEVE

It seems simple to give the same courtesy to ourselves as we do to visitors, and maybe we can do this on simple things like a spilled soda or a broken vase. But how often have we refused ourselves the courtesy or reprieve to make mistakes in life without holding onto regret, guilt, or even anger? How many times have we spoken harshly, even if only internally, to ourselves for missteps in our own lives?

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

We are instructed to love our neighbors as ourselves. Yet when we have not mastered a healthy amount of grace for ourselves, then our ability to love others is flawed from the start. Giving ourselves grace allows us to grow on this journey of life. It is an acceptance of Christ's love for us. To know that although not perfect, we are deserving of another chance and that there is no shame in having to begin again is a major element of spiritual and emotional growth.

Grace permits us the space to make mistakes and allows us then the necessary time and safety needed to truly grow. Without it, we either resist change or live in denial that anything really needs to be changed.

See grace doesn't mean we allow ourselves to continue to make the same mistakes, it opens the door to authentic change. To authentically change, requires us to accept our flaws before we can alter them.

This is where grace is essential. Without it, we often turn our anger at our own mistakes onto others, blame others for the results of our own bad choices, and deny our own complicity in failed relationships and placing all burden on the ex. Without grace, we end up often repeating the same damaging habits, refusing to see our flaws, and thus blocking us from changing these destructive actions and thoughts.

Grace is not a safety net-- it is an escape hatch. It frees us to face ourselves and to present our brokenness to God in its most raw state. It is the path to true repentance.

Working through our brokenness, our mistakes, our flaws, our bad choices, allows us to find the best version of ourselves to offer to another. We can then love as a healed whole individual capable of accepting and giving grace.