On any given day, I can guaran-damn-tee you that you can ask a woman what is up with her or how she is doing aaaaaaand she will tell you all the things she is doing wrong or where she screwed up. Sound familiar? I know I am hiding behind this because that is an issue for me too. BUT when we hear another woman tell us these things, we tell her “stop! you are being too hard on yourself” or “you are doing a great job!”. (this is a post in itself that is coming soon). But when it comes to US, we don’t believe it about ourselves.
Guilt plagues me a lot. I am no where near perfect. I am usually behind in getting stuff done – the world’s worst procrastinator. I over promise. I have the capabilities of being organized, but I don’t put out enough effort towards it. I overspend. I cannot remember to do things. And in turn, I inevitably let people down. I can say GRACE GRACE GRACE over and over and it does make me feel better. But what I have realized that I harbor GUILT deep in my heart. I have a hard time getting over it. Why am I telling you all this? Because usually when I my fingers start typing these things, it means you feel the same.
Grace and guilt cannot share a place. This is another way Satan takes the good and makes it bad. We finally throw our hands up and say – I give up, I am sorry and accept that wonderful grace. But the fact is so often we just shove our shortcomings deep down and try to ignore the guilt. The problem with that is you can’t ignore it. It seeps out of us in every aspect of life. Makes us stabby. Makes us sad. And eventually we are having a full blown panic attack/bawl fest because we just can’t take it anymore. Anxiety from it overwhelms us. We begin to believe that our shortcomings are who we are. Satan did what he wanted then. Took that grace and turned it back around on us.
We are helping not a single person by being this way. Even more so, we are killing ourselves. Guilt is a disease. It affects us down to the core. It makes us be someone we are not. We avoid facing it and who at all costs. We have to stop this. The Lord does not give us grace as a free pass to just kinda get over it. He also does not expect us to feel bad for it for the rest of our lives. NOT EVEN CLOSE. He has already taken care of it for us. We screw up. We learn. We feel terrible. We take a spoonful of GRACE. AND WE MOVE ON. That is the hardest part, moving on. More than likely, you are the only one, ONLY ONE, not moving on. More often than not, I have found that no one else worries about it nearly as much as we do. BUT what we think is that everyone thinks terrible of us and we aren’t worthy of forgiveness. ITS SO HARD NOT TO WORRY WHAT OTHERS THINK. SO HARD. I always go to a place of “they have to think I am a freaking mess! I know she said that everything is fine, but how? I let her down!!”. OR this is also about feeling guilty when we let ourselves down. Raise your hand if you are still feeling guilty for blowing your diet this past weekend? What good is that doing?
Here is the deal (and I am talking to you too RB):
You can’t change the past. You can’t stay in the past. Take your grace. Take it in big spoonfuls. Have your moment. Make whatever wrong, RIGHT. Learn. And move on. You can only control you. Take this moment to make yourself better and in the end prove that you are more than what you believe. The rest will work itself out. Spending time feeling guilty is doing absolutely NO GOOD. You are not your mistakes. Your mistakes and messiness are just a small part of you, unless you let it take over your heart. You are so much good, SO MUCH. Quit letting some moments of craziness, hard times, or just this season of life take you down.
Grace is a big part of things here on Bolded by RB, but you have to truly accept it and let the Lord take that grace and make it work in you. We have no room for guilt. NONE.
Let’s kick that bitch to the curb, shall we? 🙂
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