This is the final post in a series about Learning to Live with Myself. It is my reflective thoughts inspired by a chapter in the book Living With Contradiction by Esther de Waal.
Why I desperately needed help in this area, is that my dissatisfaction within my own heart bleeds into my relationships with others:
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"Acceptance means that though there is need for growth I am not forced. I do not have to be the person I am not. Acceptance liberates everything that is in me. Only when I am loved in that deep sense of complete acceptance can I become myself (Peter van Breemen)." pg. 45
The acceptance by Christ of me, in my present moment, frees me. Yet it doesn't just free me, it frees those I am in relationship with as well. Since I couldn't accept my own personal failures I often push others to move beyond their "failures." As I attempted to push myself into a place of acceptance, I often tried to push others there, too. Yet, in Christ, we are accepted in this gap between who we are and who we will be become. This place of grace that I've accepted for myself, I have extended to others. I know it won't be perfect, but that doesn't even bother me because that is not the point. Remember the new foundation, the new home? That is the point.
"So the end is the same for all of us - that we shall find the way of God, building through His grace on our gifts and potential, being continually shaped into the full person whom we most long to become and whom God is calling us to be." pg. 42
In Christ,
Image: Sunlight in Antarctica. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 20 Mar 2015.
http://quest.eb.com/search/119_1781894/1/119_1781894/cite
Beautifully said and oh, what a struggle for me, too. I find it easier (often) to extend grace to others over myself. Not sure hat that means :)
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