Grace for Today
I really want to be the person that I say I’m going to be right before I fall asleep. As I’m drifting off to dreamland, tucked into bed under my trusty weighted blanket and surrounded by freshly washed hair (night showers all the way!) I often think over my day and as if I’m a teacher grading homework, I tick off hours of time as productive or not, good or bad. I go over conversations with a fine tooth comb and rethink messages that I did or did not send. I think about what I ate and how my body feels. What I listened to or read or watched. How long I scrolled mindlessly.
Oftentimes, I fail myself in these daily pop quizzes. I almost never do enough and I definitely don’t meet the expectations I had of myself the night before. My striving is never enough. So I allow shame to creep in and its weight is heavy.
I berate myself and I give myself a thousand more boxes to check off my to do list: “you’re gonna read your Bible tomorrow” “you’re gonna work out tomorrow” “you’re going to not scroll for 2 hours before you go to bed tomorrow” “you’re gonna say that thing that’s been on your heart but your too afraid to say tomorrow”
The person that I think I’ll be tomorrow is different from who I am today. She’s almost always wiser and kinder and more self-disciplined. Have you seen those memes that are like “imagine how hot I’d be if I started working out and eating well? I’m not going to do that but just imagine” well it’s kinda like that. I dream big of the person I will be after a night's worth of sleep. Tomorrow I will be awesome!
And there’s some hope to that; the looking forward to a new day. But mostly it’s shame. Shame for not doing or being enough ever.
I had this realization one night as I was counting off my failures of the day and I haven’t been able to shake it. So since then, I’ve been trying to be grateful for the person I was today. The one who lived today and made hard choices today and worked hard today and loved well today. She is enough. Her work is enough. And even if tomorrow looks a lot like today I’m trying to be okay with that. Instead of labeling today as a failure, I have been trying to allow for grace. So maybe today wasn’t all that I wanted it to be? That’s okay. It can still be good. I can look forward to tomorrow with expectant hope without labeling today as a failure.
My youth pastor hated the word “try”. He said it implied failure and that if you were going to do something you should speak it as if it’s done. But honesty? This work is hard and as much as I’d like to say I am always kind to myself, I’m not. But you bet your sweet bippy I’m going to try. Wanna join me?
