Self forgiveness - the hidden antidote

We're all imperfect. We seek to make something of ourselves and most of the time don't hit the mark we wanna meet. On occasion when someone asks me if perfection is obtainable I answer "Yes, but only through Christ" to which they usually respond by saying "But no one can be exactly like Jesus",  it usually leads to a long winded conversation about perfection. The reality? On our own perfection isn't attainable. We strive for our goals and when we don't meet the mark sometimes we take it out on ourselves. We make it seem like its the end of the world and somehow a part of us is stuck on that failure or that mistake. Have you ever felt so stuck, just so glued to a spot mentally, physically or even emotionally? One word. Forgive. Some of us are stuck because we feel we are the ones at fault or we are the reason we are in the horrible situation we are in.

There are a lot of reasons and situations that may make us feel this way. I don't really want to address them all at once but here are a few that came to mind.

1. How we grew up
A lot of people are closed off emotionally and feel that their upbringing has something to do with it all and so they blame themselves and feel they can't do anything to change the person they have grown into. An example would be a situation I read of in a book, "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie whereby the main character comes from an overly religious family and some of their practices and punishments make her a closed off young girl who has so many thoughts in her head which by the end of the book is a pretty unhealthy thing for her. Your family setup may be very unhealthy for you as a person and you feel that it's your fault. E.g. kids who feel they are the reason their parents get it got divorced. P.S. it's really not your fault and neither was it ever up to you love💔❣ for everything has a time and a season.

2. Abusive relationships/families
Some of us come from abusive families or are in abusive relationships, and by abuse I don't just mean physical or sexual abuse because abuse can even be emotional. These situations really kill people on the inside. They make them doubt themselves. If these people were to write a list of the people they trust they wouldn't even put down their own name. They feel that what is happening or what happened to them is their own fault and can't pull themselves out of the pit of unforgiveness that they have dug with their own hands.

3. Bad decisions
We are all human. One of the cons of being merely human is that we make mistakes. Some of us unintentionally betray the people we say we love. We make the people we care about go through so much that when the realization of our bad deeds stares us in the face we hate ourselves and instead of fixing the mess we created we take 5 steps back and fall deeper into hurting them all the more. We may never be able to undo the pain we have inflicted on others but the best we can do is seek their forgiveness after we have forgiven ourselves.

4. Sinning (in the religious sense of the word)
There are those of us who care a lot about our spiritual selves and when we make mistakes and back slide we just feel so unworthy that we can't lift our hands up to sky and fall back down on our knees to plead for mercy. For Christians this feeling has so many repercussions because this feeling only leads to even more sinning and even more back sliding. So much more of lack of prayer and more lack of reading our bibles. Speaking from experience this is a dangerous state of mind to be in.

5. Other people's mistakes
For some reason (one I am yet to really understand) some of us blame ourselves for the mistakes of others. I am totally guilty of this😂 I like to think it's because I believe blaming someone else never solves anything and so I willingly choose to carry the burden. I know, not healthy right? But with time I've come to learn to understand that I can't control other people's actions and so must relieve myself of the burden of the actions of those around me. For those that don't really understand what I mean by all this I have a scenario for you. Say someone willingly decides to hurt you. Your first initial thought is that you did something wrong. Just for the sake of the modern world we live in (and so you understand exactly what I mean) this is the reaction you see some of your friends go through when their boy/girlfriend cheats on them and they ask what they did wrong as if their the ones that cheated.

Now at the end of the day these are all in need of one cure and one cure alone.
SELF FORGIVENESS

There's this preacher and motivational speaker who I follow on YouTube called Karolyne Roberts. In one of her videos she talks about her struggles growing up and facing challenges of our modern world (this is a basic run through cause she spoke about a lot) but what I mainly picked from that video was that we have to get ourselves in a space to forgive ourselves if we want God to forgive us or if we seek forgiveness from the people that we did wrong. Even for those who self harm, self forgiveness is a key part of moving forward. For the word of God says:

1 Peter 5:7 ~ "God cares for you, so turn all your worries to him"

Colossians 3:13 ~ "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has any grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."

See, God forgives us when we decide to come to him on our own and ask for mercy. We can only decide to come to him on our own when we have come to terms with our wrong doings. Everyone wants to do good but not everyone knows how or has the guts to do it. We need to be wise enough to understand that holding a grudge especially against ourselves hinders us from progressing and doing better in the long run.

Proverbs 19:11 ~ "It's wise to be patient and show what you are like by forgiving others."

I have personally gone through a few of the above mentioned scenarios and I can personally say it gets better. Open yourself up to the possibility of a better situation than the ditch you are in now. As I said at the beginning of this post we are all imperfect and perfection is only truly obtainable through Christ. Wouldn't it suck to miss out on all the possibly happy moments in life all because you're holding a grudge against yourself for something you didn't even do. Or even if it's something you did do but you refuse to accept that it is the past and you have learnt from your mistakes? I would like to suggest that you decide for yourself whether to carry a burden or to free yourself from self bondage and indulge in self forgiveness.

Until next time, hopefully this was helpful cause this post felt pretty deep for me 😂😂 signing out and until the next time I feel weird or bored or inspired enough to post, Awkward Girl🤗