Things I don’t like

It’s an interesting time of life for me.

I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but so many things are shifting and changing.  I find myself reevaluating my life, over and over.

There are so many things I wish I could change.  So many people I wish I could tell I was sorry.  So many good, kind people who have seen me at my worst.

I hate that.

I know I have hurt almost everyone I know.

Why have I ever had to be that way?

I am so sorry.

And then there are the other parts of myself that I can’t stand.  The times that I feel so painfully inadequate.  The times that I find myself in near-panic because I feel that I’ll just never measure up.

To so many things.

Or the times when I see what someone else does and I feel like I should just stop trying because that person is so amazing and so far ahead of me that I have no chance of catching up.

Only to find out that someone else thought that same thing about me.  Me, of all people!  Meanwhile, I’m so caught up in my flaws that I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could ever feel that way about me, that I begin the cycle of self-loathing all the more.  

Why? WHY do we do that??

I don’t know.  It’s so self-brutalizing.

But if I were to let those fears and those feelings of pain and guilt stop me from trying to grow, to go on, who would I be?  Who would any of us be? 

I have found a lot of sorrow in my past wrongs.  I have found even more sorrow in comparing myself to others.

I don’t think it’s right.  Not when I’ve tried to change and to do my best to be better.

I know I haven’t always been my best.  In fact, I’ve been my best so infrequently it breaks my heart.

But I have to keep trying.  Otherwise my life means so much less than it could.

Tonight, we drove out as a family to just enjoy the peace of nature for a little while.  It was wonderful.  And in between telling children not to fall into the cold lake and calling them back when they ran too far, I found myself caught up in between two kinds of thoughts: pain for the mistakes and inadequacy of what I have been, and promise of the possibility of what I could be. 

And as I get ready to teach my children for a new year, the same words keep ringing over and over in my mind:

“Praise each child individually
for what that child is,
and help him or her escape
our culture’s obsession
with comparing,
competing,
and never feeling
we are
enough.'”

Jeffery R. Holland

That’s my whole philosophy on teaching my children!  Why have I not learned yet to accept it for myself? 

So tonight, two new goals:

1)  Forgive what I once was, and be different and better. 
2)  Quit COMPARING.  It is destructive.  I know who I am.  I know it.  I am a daughter of God, an imperfect, yet divine woman.  Our culture is obsessed with comparing and tearing down.  I have to stop.

So please forgive me if I have ever hurt you?  I’m not who I used to be.  If you’re here reading, somehow you’ve been forgiving of me and allowed me to grow.  Thank you for that kindness.  I will try to have the same love for others and for myself.

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