Do you like the person you see when you look in a mirror? Are you able to say, “I love you” and mean it, wholeheartedly accepting the person you see who God has formed and made in you … both inwardly and outwardly? If not, I challenge you to learn how to love the person that God made you to be. It is really worth it!
I had to learn how to love myself … and it started with forgiveness. As I sat through a session about forgiveness at the world race launch this past July, I realized that there were people from my past that I still had not forgiven for wounds that I had experienced. Now, six months later as I have been diving deeper into this topic, I had an epiphany.
How can I truly forgive others, if I cannot even forgive myself?
Forgive myself for what, you might ask? A control issue called PERFECTIONISM and PEOPLE PLEASING.
Finding myself unable to move beyond my failures, mistakes and sins, has lead to being stuck in a spiral of debilitating regret, depression and self-hatred. I have failed to live up to my own idealized image of myself. Unrealistic expectations of myself have not been met, and there has been a lack of acceptance on my part. Many of my thoughts have revolved around, “I should have done better” or “I cannot believe I did that” or “What is wrong with me?”
Fear of negative judgments and thoughts about what people around me think about me, left me gravitating towards a people pleasing mentality for years. I have manipulated myself to act and react differently to different people in situations, just in an attempt to please them. I have done good works just to satisfy people. I do not like people being angry with me and I hate seeing conflict arise so I would do whatever it took to please them…whether it was right or wrong.
How do I actually go about forgiving myself?
In first John it says that “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). Based off of this verse, God has already forgiven me, so why should I withhold forgiveness toward myself? I am the recipient of the precious gift of Jesus’ shed blood for the forgiveness of my sins. But why have I not been able to accept this gift with joy and enjoy it to the fullest? Instead for so many years, I have been denying the work of what Jesus did for me when he suffered and died, paying the ultimate price on the cross.
So what’s changed in me? I have begun to truly accept this free gift, seeing myself as a new creation in Jesus Christ, and bringing glory to God’s name. I have been learning to accept myself for who I am in Christ and not trying to be someone that is impossible to be. I am both a saint and a sinner, beautiful yet broken, and weak yet strong. It’s not easy being humble, but it is in those moments of humility this month when I’ve been able to emotionally accept that I am a fallible, imperfect and sinful creature, but God has still forgiven me and loves me just the same.
Out of my love for Jesus, the author and perfecter of my life, I’m letting go, accepting myself for who I am in God’s eyes because I am forgiven. Now, I’m learning to live in this reality on a daily basis. Forgiving myself has not been easy, especially when I live with myself and my thoughts 24/7. I never get a break. However, despite the challenge, God gives me grace and allows me to have the capacity to forgive myself when I make a mistake.
From this moment, I find myself moving forward, emotionally accepting my imperfections. It is in the place of humility along with Christ’s unconditional forgiveness that allows me to press onward and find the freedom and forgiveness that I been longing. Now, more often than not, I’m able to look in the mirror, say “I love you” and truly believe those words.
