Accepting ourselves can be hard

​I often feel inadequate about so many things. Like many others, I am my own worst critic. It is so easy to be unkind and harsh with myself. Much of the time I feel like my flaws and shortcomings stick out like a green neon shirt. I definitely can’t miss them, so they must be glaringly bright to all those around me.

My sister-in-law, Tonya, along with a couple of her friends, have started this initiative called Living52. The idea is to focus on one word a week for each of the 52 weeks of the year. The word for this week, the first week of the year, is “Acceptance.” 
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “acceptance.” I’ve been asking myself what the word means to me. I’ve also been thinking about how the word is appropriate as the first word on the list. 

www.living52words.com

What is it in my life that I need to accept? The longer I’ve focused in on the word, the more I found myself looking inward. I came to realize that before I can truly accept anyone or anything else, I need to learn to accept myself. This should be my starting place. How incredibly wise to make this the first word on a list of meaningful words.

I could almost instantaneously start a list of all the things I don’t like about myself or the areas where I believe I fall short. If I’m honest with myself, I often feel inadequate or that I’m a failure.

I feel so flawed and cracked. 

My life has been filled with scars and hurts for so long. It’s hard to believe that I can become anything useful and beautiful in God’s sight again. Instead of embracing who I am and choosing to accept myself, I tell myself that “I’m a failure” and “I’m not enough.” 

I am coming to realize that I need to clean house and exterminate these destructive thoughts from my life. In dwelling on these negative opinions, I have come to see how detrimental these messages are.  I have allowed them to dwell in my heart and mind. Because of this, I view everything in my world through the filters of failure and self-disapproval. None of these thoughts bring glory to God or reflect His truths. Neither do they honor myself or who God made me to be.

​I need to accept my lumps, bumps, and bruises as they are. I need to realize that all those things are what make me who I am. I am stronger, wiser, more courageous because of the things I have experienced in my life. I have lived a life in which I have had to embody and embrace resilience. Giving up has never been an option for me. I have, over and over, in my life consciously chosen to dig down deep, pull up my boot straps, and continue on.  

The truth is, however, I can be so quick to be overly critical and harsh with myself, when in the same instances or circumstances, I wouldn’t hesitate to extend grace to someone else. Grace is such a beautiful thing. It should be freely given when the need arises, but I am oh so quick to withhold it from myself. ​

But how would my life look different if I truly could learn to accept myself? ​

Accept all my imperfections and shortcomings. If, and it’s a big if, if I can resolutely choose to accept myself, if I can choose to show myself grace and choose to receive the Grace that God so freely gives, well, then, God can take the dried, cracked vessel of my life; he can rework and remake it into something completely new. 

You see, for a long time I have prayed, “God please make me that girl I used to be. The girl who could be used by you.” But now I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I was praying the wrong thing. Maybe I should be praying for God to remake me into something new. A new, more mature woman with scars that are healed. Scars that might allow me to help someone else along the journey.

Our pastor once told us about an ancient Japanese art of fixing broken pottery called Kintsugi. It is when an artist takes broken pottery and repairs it. Instead of camouflaging the cracks, the repairs are made with gold, silver, or platinum. The artist intentionally calls attention to the cracks by filling them with precious metals. Through this process, the piece often becomes even more beautiful than it once was, while still honoring the history of the piece. What a beautiful picture I can take for my life. God can take all the flaws and difficult pieces of my life. He can put them back together and make me whole again and more beautiful than I was before. 

I just need to stop, take a deep breath and realize that God loves me and WANTS to spend time with me. He doesn’t think I’m messed up or inadequate, he just thinks, “Man, there’s my daughter. Isn’t she beautiful. Sometimes a beautiful mess, but boy, I sure do love EVERYTHING about her.” And if I can welcome the truth that God loves all of me including my lumps, bumps, and bruises, how can I not make the paradigm shift to truly accept, love, and embrace myself? To do any less would be dishonoring who God made me to be, and it would dishonor my story.