This week has been a bad week.
It was one of those weeks where you feel as though you are constantly doing things, but never getting enough done. One of those weeks where you are completely and utterly exhausted. Depleted of everything. You go to bed tired, you wake up even more tired. You can visibly see your chest move in and out desperately in hyperventilation, but you cannot feel the air entering into your lungs, you cannot feel as though you are breathing.
And in your tired mess of stress, humanness, and fear of the future, you are expected to brave-face it through work, school, school projects, social interactions. You are expected to remain whole when your insides are literally stringing apart like string cheese and melting into mush.
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My fiancé, Kieran, and I were constantly stress-arguing. You know those times when the people that you love most in this world are around you but your inner sadness and stress that have turned your guts to garbage are making it extremely hard for you to see anything beautiful in this world because of a huge sense of unrealistic impending doom? Thats where it starts. The petty arguments. The petty comments. The fear. The defensiveness. The feeling of being so fragile and vulnerable, like a baby bird that has fallen from its nest, and the whole world seems to have you in the palm of their hands; with one squeeze, your bones break, so you must fight fight fight fight fight, when the last thing you need is more turmoil. That is what our lives looked like this week.
And I made big mistakes. I made mistakes in accusations, in being so afraid to let go of my "rightness" because I could not bear to lose control over one more thing. I stuck to my guns when all I needed to do was to put my guns down and embrace, and hold, and breathe.
Everyone who was in contact with me got some level of the brunt of this stress. And it wasn't right on my end. No matter how badly we feel our world crumbling, we can and do have control over the things we do; there is great freedom in that, there is also great responsibility. And when we do wrong to someone, when we hurt someone, we don't have a right to choose that we didn't. We don't get to justify our wrong because of personal woes. We. Can't. Do. That.
I was left looking at myself in contempt. I realized that I was wrong, I realized that we need to be wrong sometimes. Because if we aren't being wrong, chances are, we are in denial.
"I'm sorry." I said to Kieran.
"I'm sorry, too." Kieran said to me.
"I love you." I said to Kieran.
"I love you, too." Kieran said to me.
"I'm sorry." I said to a miscellaneous other.
"I don't want a relationship right now."
Hold on.
Let's think about this.
What do you do when you are clearly, utterly, and severely in the wrong. You are convicted, you are sorry, and you want to make things right, and you can't make it right the way that you want to make it right?
What do you do when you did wrong, you did what you could, and you can't do anymore?
When a people pleaser like myself, when an anxiety-ridden human like myself hears these words, they implode. When we know that someone isn't happy with us, when we know that we weren't good enough inside to act as a good person would in that moment, when we have to sit with the words of refusal from another individual, it destroys from the inside.
And I mean destruction in the sense of crying on the floor and not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to eat, not wanting to do anything because you suddenly see every icky tendency that you have and suddenly, that moment, that incident becomes the entire embodiment for what you feel like you are.
And that is what I do. I have so much love inside of me, and I contribute good into the world. But I stumble, and I do wrong sometimes, and suddenly I renounce myself to solely and utterly my wrong, and that is unhealthy.
I am not saying that we shouldn't feel remorse, remorse when we are wrong is necessary and important in the process of growth and change. We have to stay convicted over things we do that hurt others, we must stay accountable.
What we can't do, however, is allow a mistake to reduce our self worth, our self-love, and our constant pursuit to be better and better every day.
And we can't get better, we can't get more wholesome, we can't get more present if we are sitting on the floor crying about how unlovable we are and how bad we suck (because, as humans, we all suck sometimes).
Because of who I am, I turned to Jesus.
Much like I always do when I feel inadequate, when I feel permanently wrong, when I feel ugly on the inside.
Because of who HE is, I got a powerful answer.
1 John 4: 18-19:
"18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.19 We love because He first loved us."
And with this verse, I felt the air go into my lungs for the first time all week.
I am completely, utterly, stupidly imperfect. In my short 19 years of living, I have hurt human beings that I have loved, I have struggled with substance abuse, I have struggled with accountability, I have struggled with fear, trust, identity, confidence, patience, peaceableness, and maintaining stillness. I have struggled with control, and my tendency to need to feel that I MUST have control in every situation or I will just not be able to go on. I have lied, I have been a bad friend. I have felt deep anger and struggled to let go of it. I have done so many things wrong....I am so wrong...
and I am so loved.
Christ loves us relentlessly, he pursues us relentlessly, fearlessly. He is the only perfect being. He is the only being who can love perfectly. And I am made perfect in His love and His love alone. Love, loving others, loving oneself, has nothing to do with punishment. It has nothing to do with getting even. It has nothing to do with holding onto grief. It has nothing to do with being right. Because all of these things insinuate fear. All of these things insinuate that there is the potential of losing that love, a love on condition, and there is no fear in love.
I cannot make people forgive me. I cannot make people love me. But I can forgive myself when I stumble, and I can trust that there is a God who sees me as worth loving.
And so are you.
You are worthy of forgiving yourself.
You are worthy of believing you can change and grow.
You are worthy of waking up and realizing that you don't want to be this person anymore,
And you are worthy of starting anew.
And not everyone is going to love you, because they are fighting their own battles, they are going through their own waves, and they, just like you, are incapable of loving anyone perfectly. They are just as imperfect as you are and ever will be, and they are deemed just as worthy of perfect, fearless love as you are.
That is okay. Love them from afar, forgive yourself in the now, and know that there is a God out there who deems you worthy of a perfect, fearless love. Who does not want to punish you, but rather hold you, hold you until you become you again, and hold you until you become the you that you are supposed to be.
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