“Self, I forgive you.”
These were precious words I learnt from a sweet lady who told me about her own practice of self-forgiveness.
Every so often we come into need for compassion on ourselves. But sometimes there’s a tricky difficulty around our needs, and a request for compassion is not such an easy thing to articulate, especially when it concerns us.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO EXPRESS YOUR NEEDS
I came across these simple words in an email one morning: “Your needs are not a problem.”
It made me think twice about the way I thought about the having of needs, usually in condescending and comparative – double evils – language: Having needs makes us less than, not as good as, more problematic, deficient, not measure up, etc.
When we hear a voice wielding shame over our heads, reach for compassion. Ask for compassion. It’s a proven attack against our helplessness.
“Scorn has broken my heart and has left me helpless; I looked for sympathy, but there was none, for comforters, but I found none.” (Psalm 69:20)
The author of those lyrics, David – a musician and songwriter among other things – was great at communicating his helplessness. But as in touch as he was with his need, he was even bolder in his plea for mercy.
In asking for compassion, we’re required to communicate what’s tripping us up and how we might need care. Those words that bubble from the deep places in our heart have to make the journey out of our lips.
For some of us, that can well be a crazy thing to do.
HAVE HOPE THAT THINGS CAN GET BETTER
But first, relent in criticising ourselves to no end, gently tell the critic in us that we’ve heard all the ways we haven’t measured up to our expectations, and decide that we’ve also heard enough.
Being kind to ourselves is not to gloss over our mistakes and failures. We must accept where we’ve fallen short and keep being better. But don’t accept the thinking that things cannot change. Or that there’s no way out.
Hope is to growth as oxygen is to life.
Adopt a growth mindset like Carol Dweck: “Failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with and learnt from.”
The best place for struggle is where there’s hope and help. In any courageous exercise of compassion on our hurt self, we have to let hope in again, so we can struggle forward. And journey upwards.
Hope is to growth as oxygen is to life.
KNOW WHERE YOUR HELP CAN COME FROM
Who we’re talking to affects how we talk.
David’s faith had provisions for repentance and forgiveness because the God that he believed in was one – is one – of mercy and of compassion. That’s why we often hear David’s raw, honest pleas for help in his times of need.
In any attempt at self-compassion, we would have thought about all the mistakes we wished we hadn’t made, or about all the things we wish we could change but are outside of our power to.
Yet if we’re talking to a God of mercy and compassion, it changes how we come before Him. It’s well within His power and delight to take the burden of shame and guilt from our shoulders.
We can have forgiveness. We can receive mercy. Maybe we don’t like the idea of asking for mercy – maybe it makes us sound desperate – but mercy is the outflow of God’s compassion, and He wishes to lavish it on us with utmost grace. Not condemnation or snark.
These days, it’s hard to tell who’s overwhelmed or hurting in a pit.
But I suppose some things are common to our shared humanity. And the weight of insecurity, shame or fears probably finds the next person as much. Until we lay it down.
Wagering that perhaps someone out here – you perhaps – has also recently felt the weight of your failures and find in yourself a real need for compassion, I’ll pass these few words on:
“(Your name here), I forgive you.”
Try saying it out loud so you hear it. And keep going.
