Giving Ourselves Some Grace

As I Was Saying is a forum for a variety of perspectives to foster faith-related conversations among our readers with the goal of mutual learning, even in disagreement. Apart from articles written by editorial staff, these perspectives do not necessarily reflect the views of The Banner.

I’m the kind of person who likes to beat myself up.

Correction: I don’t actually LIKE beating myself up. It’s just something I tend to do.

Part of that comes from the fact that I’m a people pleaser. One friend once referred to me as a “human golden retriever” who wants all the praise and all the pats on the head. And when I don’t get that praise and don’t get those pats on the head, I tend to default into thinking there’s something wrong with me, and as a result, I start beating myself up for all the possible things it could be.

Another part of my tendency to beat myself up comes from my perfectionism. Put simply, I don’t like doing anything, saying anything, or even writing anything (you know, like articles for The Banner) unless I can do it perfectly. And when I don’t (or at least think I don’t), well then, there I go, beating myself up again.

For instance, I can still remember, all these years later (I was probably 5 or 6 at the time), the shame of getting scolded by a random woman at the park during my childhood church’s annual church picnic because I was chasing the geese at the edge of the park pond and sending them fluttering up into the air. “You shouldn’t treat animals that way!” she yelled at me, and I felt, deep down, that not only had I done something wrong, but that I, in my very core, was wrong.

I can also remember the middle school comment I made, in the presence of a Catholic man, about how Catholics aren’t real Christians, and I can still see the look of shock, sadness, and confusion on his face.

And I can remember the high school letter I wrote and sent to a local family in my community (fellow Christians, no less) who I thought, without proof, had caved in to the pressure they were under to sell their house and property to the local Native American tribe that wanted to build a casino in the area.

And I can debate the actual right- or wrongness of some of those actions. For instance, I don’t think there was actually anything wrong with me chasing the geese around at my local park as a kid (though, if I were to do that today as a 38-year-old, that might be a different story).

But the fact is I’ve carried those memories, as well as their resulting shame and regret, my whole life, and they resurface from time to time, filling me with pain and sadness and making me wish I’d never done or said or written those things at all.

And yet, as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus Christ, and as a believer in the gospel (and someone who preaches it every week too), I know I’m forgiven. I’m forgiven for those things. And I’m forgiven for the whole multitude of other sinful and shameful things I’ve done and said and written in the past too, both those I remember and those I don’t. God has wiped them away. As the Apostle Paul writes in the opening verse of Romans 8, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” When God looks at me, he doesn’t see those things, those sins, or any of the other sins I’ve committed either. Instead, he sees his Son. He sees his record and his innocence in my place. As Paul says a few chapters earlier, “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).

That’s true for me.

It’s true for you too.

So while there might be some benefit to carrying around our regrets and the wish we hadn’t done certain things in the past so we can learn from them and avoid making those same mistakes again, we don’t don’t need to keep beating ourselves up for them, holding onto them, and replaying them over and over in our minds and our memories. God has given us his grace. He’s given us his forgiveness. And he’s given us his mercy too.

Maybe we can, as a result, give ourselves a bit of that grace as well.