There is one person in the world for whom grace-showing is the last thing I want to do. She is just so unbearable sometimes. She gets on my nerves with all of her demands. Her expectations are both low and high, insulting and impossible. She thinks she can do nothing, and also everything.
She is me. And I am her toughest, most un-gracious critic.
Do you get on your own nerves with all of your issues and hang-ups and pride and success? Does it scare you how much you want the limelight while also terrify you at the thought of having it? Do you say one thing, yet mean another? Are you feeling less-than while also better? Do you compare, critique, size-up, shrink back, and wonder why you have to be so sensitive? Do you wish you were different while also wishing everyone else could just be more like you?
Me too.
How can we show this girl grace, with all of her yuck and mess and running around? With all of her self-focus and woe-is-me’s while children are starving in Africa and New York and downtown?
It isn’t easy to extend grace to ourselves, to say Yes, you are a mess. What did you expect? But your life is hidden in Christ. He is not a mess. He is in you, and you are in Him. And in that place, you are safe, seen, and accepted. I’m not saying it’s okay for you to never change, but I am saying that receiving grace will be the only way you can.
Receive it, friend. Breathe in the sweetness of acceptance. Release the gavel in your mind that you hold against yourself in judgement. It is not for you to judge, it is not for you to punish, it is not for you.
During the month of October, I am hosting a series called 31 Days of Grace on my blog, Chatting at the Sky. Today is Day 6, and it could be the most important one. Because really, if we do not receive and extend to ourselves the abundance of grace and patience and love that is given for free from the Only One Who Can, then how can we really live?
by Emily Freeman, Chatting at the Sky
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Amen! This is so hard for me but through God’s grace {and infinite patience} I am getting better..thank you for this post and your beautiful heart!
Emily, girl, have you been reading my mind? Oh, I so needed this grace-reminder today! Thank you for the encouragement, for the way you help us live faith in our lives with each other AND ourselves. You are a beautiful gift to the word world…and to me.
Oh, Holley. You do a girls heart good 🙂
The timing couldn’t be more perfect! Day 6 needs lots of grace and those mercies that are new every morning.
Yes, yes and yes. Just yesterday I was thinking, “I know that He loves me, that I’m accepted and okay. More than okay actually. But how can I be okay with myself?” The enemy within is the greatest one of all. The putting it all into practice part, where belief meets up with reality, it’s hard.
You’re on a roll, girl.
So true…if we can’t accept the gift of grace we’ve been offered by our Father then how can we truly extend it to someone else?
One thing I just want to say is that your Blog is so perfect!
“She is me”
Oh dang girl… I totally didn’t expect that. How quickly I am to point the finger at someone else’s faults and ignore my own… and yet, I probably am my own internal worst critic too.
Am LOVING the series y’all are doing this 31 days – it is SO cool 🙂
I am my worst enemy and I really needed this today. I guess HE knew that and drove me to finally catch up on my feed reader. THANK YOU and I will be following your 30 days of grace.
I am so enjoying your grace postings. Each day I think, “This is the first time I’ve ever understood grace this way.” God has given you a gift of clarity on a subject that should be so clear and simple, but at least in my life, has been so clouded and distorted. Thank you. I’m looking forward to each of the 31 days.
OH DEAR!!
How do you know me so well?
Seeking that grace……
Oh I love this! I am usually writting on similar subjects. We give ourselves such a hard time don’t we?? Always trying to live up to un reachable expectations. Great post!
Ouch. So much easier said than done.
So often we believe grace is something that God offers to us and the we offer to others. It is just as important that we extend that grace to ourselves and truly understand the grace God offers.
Thank you for this.
So very true, something I struggle with on a daily basis.
Thank you. This is exactly what I needed to hear. “I’m not saying it’s okay for you to never change, but I am saying that receiving grace will be the only way you can.” Thank you, Jesus for your Grace!
oh emily. My answer to your paragraph of questions is YES. And you are so right that change is an important journey but grace is the only ticket.
Your writing cuts to my heart–it’s a beautiful gift.
beautiful post
Oh my! You spoke right to me! I have accepted God into my life but sometimes, like what you wrote, life takes me over and I start becoming negative and pessimistic. I don’t like being like that but so many hurtful things that go on that it’s hard to just stay focused. It seems I struggle every day with my thoughts and feelings.
Wow, Emily…freaky. You’re running around a lot of people’s heads it seems. Seriously scary.
Or is it lovely? We aren’t alone. I’M not alone. I would never imagine these things of you, and I’d wager, you wouldn’t suspect them of me. And yet here we are, relating to one another, in a state of imperfection.
For you to be brave enough to admit these things instills courage for us as well. Thanks, friend.
His grace IS sufficient, I just forget that sometimes…. xo
I was just thinking this yesterday – that I’m so glad God has grace for me – and I need to hear it the most. Like my husband says, “We need to preach the gospel to ourselves and others – EVERY DAY!”
Wow, is this just what I needed to hear today or what?!
Heading over to your blog to catch up on the past few days…
Oh my goodness, Emily! I struggle with that very thing! I am working on my thought life right now so that I can stop being so selfish and un-graceful in my thoughts by memorizing and digging deeper into Scripture right now. I have a long way to go with changing my thinking but one day at a time I believe that my fingers will slowly loosen enough for God to get them out of my grip and take them into his. Thank you for this post. I so needed it today!
There is a reckoning here – the reckoning ourselves dead to sin, alive to God. Accepting grace by faith, we find we are already complete in Him. Living there – that is the hard part, because we are still Eve, reaching for that fruit to know what God knows, to be like Him, instead of being one with Him.
Thanks so much for this timely word. I have been beating myself up for hurting someone I deeply care about. Even though she has forgiven me, I am still VERY angry at myself. I guess it is time to show the same compassion to myself as I would to any one else. Kinda Hard.
oh…
wow…
i am right there with you. right. there.
What a beautiful post Emily! I needed to hear this today. You are such a blessing!
Isn’t it funny how we extend grace to others as an act of love yet completely miss the mark by not extending it to…ourselves? I too, am learning this and I thank the Lord for…His GRACE!
🙂
xoxo
Thank you for this post today. I have a hard time extending grace to myself. I am most negative and unbelieving towards myself. I cannot seem to “give myself” a break. I am so busy extending grace to others, that I forget that I am the one who needs it most. I am off to check out your “31 Days of Grace”.
this is me.
I am my own worst enemy. Great blog. I am also the worst at forgiving myself. LOL. That’s why God invented chocolate.
Thank you, Emily, for verbalizing our most secret and personal thoughts……to its sad ‘perfection.’ Thank you for the reminders of grace…this is why we’re just LearningGrace. Following the 31 Days of Grace because I need it. Thank you, Emily. Thank You, Lord!
So good, Emily. “It is me”…wow! My mind was racing to whom that “other person” might be, when your words “it is me” hit me and stung me. Wow! And your question, “Do you wish you were different while also wishing everyone else could just be more like you?” Yep. How can that be? Neither of those, really, is a good place to be. I am learning, daily, to both extend grace to others AND to myself! Thank you for writing and sharing with us what God is sharing with you!
Lovely. Perfect.
OH if that isn’t the truth. I have been pondering this thought lately too. We are NOT required to give ourselves grace but to accept it from the Lord. And who ARE we to say that His grace is NOT sufficient? If He says we are forgiven, are we not forgiven? It’s a constant battle within. I am not sure I will ever totally tackle it but God will. I did not know you were doing 31 days of Grace. What a great topic.
And, I always remember you are The Nester’s sister as soon as I see your face 🙂 Thank you for being an encouragement!
Who doesn’t need this? Heaven knows I did today. His grace is the only thing that evens out my sitting-on-my-high-horse to throwing-myself-under-the-bus extremes. Thank you for this, Emily!
Not until I hit middle age and was awakened nightly by the voice of the enemy accusing me of everything I’d done wrong did I recognize my desperate need to cling to grace. Such beautiful truth here.
Imagine my surprise when you said it was you and not me! I definitely took this one right between the eyes. Thank you SO much for sharing this. I’ve bookmarked it because I know I will need reminders. I’m so hard on myself.
Absolutely. Why are we our own worst critics?
Guilt about mistakes made as a mom. Guilt about ways I didn’t pursue my husband. Guilt about not serving enough or being on enough committees or knowing enough or cooking enough. Ugh. Guilt is a heavy, ungracious thing to bear.
Thanks for the reminder that we don’t have to.
As always, encouraging words.
Going back and forth between being “good” and wanting glory, and then how weak and spiritually wrong I am is something I go through many times a day. Thank the Lord for grace. I loved the way you started out in this devotion. It caught me off guard. I had no idea you were talking about yourself. I treat me this way too. This is exactly what grace is for, you’re right. And we’re so needy of it even when we are feeling like we’re going to be in the limelight because of how “good” we are. That’s probably when we need it most.
And how can I accept grace (and extend it) if I’m not looking to the one who made it? Who is grace? Who is patiently waiting for me to seek Him?
Thanks.
Oh, my goodness. You could have been writing about me, Emily.
And even as I read it, I find myself thinking, “Who do I think I am anyway? I must really think I’m something that I would be the judge.” And so I judge myself for judging myself. It never ends.
I am going to carry your word picture with me. I want to put down the gavel.
I love you, Emily.
[…] These are the Days of Grace […]
wow well said, God is Good so Good and your words thru grace helped me, thankyou I loved this
Perfect, perfect thoughts to read any (and every!) day. I have been studying and thinking about this exact struggle of giving myself grace (and forgiving myself for my faults) so, so much, especially after becoming a mother.
I love this line: ” I’m not saying it’s okay for you to never change, but I am saying that receiving grace will be the only way you can.”
And the last line of the post.
Grace is one of my favorite and most-needed topics. Great post, and thank you.
This was awesome Emily! At our small group tonight we were talking about acceptance, and who do we find it hardest to accept, and the answer for most of us was ourselves. We are our own worst critic. We show ourselves no mercy. We are harder on oursleves than anyone else would ever be.
I have struggled under such a burden lately. Dealing with anxiety and depression and frustrated at these issues that are part of who I am. Coming to grips with them and allowing God to use me right where I am.
Bernice
http://bernicewood.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/pruning-away-to-be-more/
Emily, THANK YOU. Thank you. Thank you. You’re God-sent and beautiful, sending me this oxygen tank of grace. ooxx… Bonnie
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