Choose Self-forgiveness more...

Hi

I have been coming to terms with myself lately regarding instances when I’ve let myself down. This especially when it comes to my relationships with God and people. However, whenever I ponder on this, the buck always stops at me and the relationship I have with myself. Inherently, I end up really in disbelief and disappointment for being so trusting. I am sure I am not the only one who feels like in the genuine part of their heart, the fall for mediocre from people around them and end up held up with ever growing pain. As the pain sting, your genuine heart gets to forgive almost swiftly those who hurt you but the struggle now is that Self-forgiveness is hard and almost inaccessible.

What do I mean about self-forgiveness being hard? I mean it is exactly that, hard and the more you hold it off, the more your heart hardens. Then as you go on living amongst those you forgive time and time again, you realize how inaccessible it is. Self-forgiveness is choosing to tell yourself you are at peace with your faults, weaknesses, vulnerability and naivety. To put it well, in self-forgiving, most times you are admitting to being stupid or blinded by something or someone. Who wants to look at themselves and say, you are stupid or foolish? I know I don’t, but unless you are willing to name and shame yourself, sometimes it feels like Self-forgiveness cannot happen. Unless you are open to being humble, you can find yourself with no acknowledgement of self-sabotage and self-sacrifice. It has been way too hard for me in the past because I use to be that person who wants to be right and struggled with apologizing. This all changed a while ago when the one place I placed my trust and confidence in forced a reality ever so humbling. So, I’ve had to learn to forgive without apologies and choose to accept things that I would normally challenge, as a way to give up control. This is not easy, in fact it feels almost like you are erasing yourself from existing. It is like you are giving up. I am at this point convinced it is called letting go and letting God.

As spiritual as I can be, I never really lived with awareness that I will never be of growth if I don’t let go of my own narrative of how things should be no matter how right I think they are or may be. To me black is black, and white is white, no in between. This means I lived for a long while stiff and self-righteous. Due to Self-Care Investments, God finally dropped me low enough to change. As a result, I have this different outlook and take refuge in being wronged as an opportunity to trust the process of life more. I now perceive it as an opportunity to get closer to Him(God). And to be honest, I don’t know how to explain it, but I have come to this understanding that in forgiving others I am investing in my relationship with God especially when I am shattered. I really don’t know how I have been able to practice forgiveness as of late but I get that it earned me better comprehension of my spirituality. I seem to be getting content with looking like a fool. I can now say I get what it means to do things for His Glory. It means you won’t really enjoy certain acts to extend that which you wish done to you, but you will definitely have less regrets and earn peace as you move forward with your life.

That is it actually, in self-positioning to forgive yourself for not seeing through things and people, for letting yourself down, a harvest of being at peace with oneself comes naturally. I have a long way to go in self-forgiving but I’m here for it. The more I choose growth over being right, the better I feel about myself no matter how dumb it feels. Self-forgiveness is a desire to unlearn self-harming habits in order to heal and be harmonious with all that you are. All you are is an imperfect being who lives to discover daily just how far they can actually go in life no matter what comes to tempt, destroy or even damage. Self-forgiveness is like a resurrection. You come out more sure of God’s grace and confident that you matter. For the little I have been unlearning about myself in order to grow prouder, I have come to be more self-caring and loving. The agony of coming to terms with the reality that we tend to let ourselves down is incredible. However, it is enabling growth spiritually and psychologically. I am becoming more self-compassionate. This is important because the ones we lean on are the ones who trigger us most and therefore, it becomes a challenge to even open up to them that we are hurting or disappointed. You soon realize that you just need to forgive them and then consider the next best thing, being compassionate to yourself and forgive expecting too much from them.

Why do I feel this matters? Well, you will find that in character building matters, we are often required to deal with the person in the mirror and not those around us. Character Building deals with our own shadows, the devil in us or what haunts us mostly. While it is easier to focus on others, by blaming and shaming, to truly grow and be better, you’ve got to rather get frank with yourself. You must realize that you are the one who mostly needs to self-manage better. This means accepting your wrongs. It means accounting more and shifting blame less. It means learning to self-forgive.

For most of us, catching feelings is due to the fact that we are struggling to deal with self-inflicted wounds. Think about the unrealistic expectations we place on others. Think about the expectations you place on yourself that truly cannot be met since you have no room for disappointment. How you expect things to always go the way you want. How you think what you wish for others is what they want for themselves, or them liking the same things you like. As you choose Self-Care on a daily you will tap into this epiphany that actually, you don’t really want for others to like everything about you because if that is the case, then there is pretense somewhere. Why? Simply because there are things you don’t like about yourself, things you want to outgrow. So anyone liking everything about you is potentially deceiving you.

I hope for this to trigger some self-interest in introspecting. This can be fruitful in humbling yourself enough to be able to redefine your sense of self into a more positive outcome as far as self-forgiveness is concerned. It Matters that you invest in self-forgiveness in order to reduce the inward weight that life projects on the outside.

This scripture, 1 Peter 5:7 "God cares for you, so turn all your worries over to him." – can help you believe that you too matter and need not to hold on to the strongholds that come with self-persecution over things you wrongly done even unto yourself. Let go of being right, pray about everything and for yourself. Take care of yourself by letting go of unrealistic expectations. Rather project all your expectations to the Lord.

Regards

Livhuwani