Bathing in self-forgiveness

I Timothy 1:15


I wrote about forgiving others earlier this week--forgiving someone who hasn't asked and may not even know they need to ask, and forgiving someone who has repented and asked for forgiveness. I've had the opportunity to set myself free by forgiving others who hurt me even if they didn't ask for it or realize they'd done so. I've also had the blessing of relationship restoring forgiveness, given to someone who knew they'd wounded me and wanted to restore our relationship.

But the one forgiveness that I'm not so good at it self-forgiveness.

I believe it's because as a child I often felt like that I wasn't smart enough; I always let others down. I fell short of their expectations, and thus, I fell short of mine.

This has been very tough for me to learn, but I get plenty of opportunities to work on it. Like today. I acted poorly; I should have been a light, and if I couldn't be positive, I should have known to have kept my mouth shut. But I didn't. Nope. No way. That would have been too easy.

I apologized for my wrongdoing. I asked God to forgive me too. I knew I had wounded Him by potentially closing doors He was opening for me. I was not letting Him be the light in my window.

And then I asked Him to bathe me in self-forgiveness. I asked Him to let me shrug it off. I'm human; I made a mistake. I'm sorry I did it. Now it's time to learn from this and move on.

So that's what I'm going to do. Write this off to building humility within my soul YET again. And go forward knowing that I'm never going to be perfect, and if I can forgive others...I mostly certain can and should forgive myself. And move on.

Tomorrow's another day. I get more opportunities to make more mistakes, and hopefully to learn from them. It may have been a stupid mistake, but I'm smart enough to enjoy God's forgiving grace!

Romans 8:1

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