I feel overdue for a check in. I know I’ve had some real highs and lows in the past couple weeks but nothing feels worth reporting.

I realize that I have spent the last year or so trying to come to terms with parts of myself that I don’t like. Maybe it’s just this final stretch of my twenties taking its toll. Maybe this year has hit me harder than I’m fully cognizant of. Regardless, I feel a new awareness of faults and flaws paired with a knowledge that they are not going anywhere quickly. So I sit here listening to Tracy Chapman while I try to decide if I can sort my personality and consciousness into categories.

I have to admit that the self love movement has been tainted by those who have hurt me and loved themselves too much to change or apologize. But I’m finally beginning to understand how much harder this life is when you don’t try to love, understand, and accept yourself. I’ve always sought validation from outside sources like school, church, work, and family despite never feeling much like a people-pleaser. Instead of trying to please everyone, I typically would find a person who I respected immensely or who I shared common values with and I’d try to extricate the feedback that I need from them.

Whether the feedback was that I needed to change, try harder, or give myself grace...I didn’t care. As long as the person was on my list of personally selected authorities, I’d bend or rest as they directed. It’s only now that I have accumulated a pile of folks who have steered me wrong or directed their lives away from my core values... only now that I’ve been asked for impossible leaps enough times that I recognize what could have been avoided if I wasn’t doubting my own worth. My doubt was a crack in a cup that I kept asking everyone else to fill. For years, I resented the folks who took advantage of that crack. For years, I hoped I’d finally be full enough of other people’s opinions that the crack would close under the weight of my competency and spiritual growth.

I know my cup won’t ever be perfect, but closing the crack of self doubt is made easier if you love yourself. But loving yourself without knowing yourself is cheap and temporary. I’m at the part of the journey where I can see mistakes that I’ve repeated in more than one relationship, ways I continually hurt people. The patterns are there and I have a couple of choices. My younger self would have run to church to try to prove that I could change. Or I might have found a reason in my upbringing for why I am the way I am and made a plan to overcome the flaw. My slightly older self would ask a trusted friend if it’s really that bad and likely been crushed if they were honest and distrustful if they told me what I wanted to hear. 

 This year, I’ve been sitting with my flaws a lot. Trying to argue less with them. Trying to listen. Trying to accept that they’ve been part of me for a long time now. Trying to imagine how Jesus might talk to me by remembering Zacchaeus, the thief, Mary, Martha, Peter, Tomas, Judas, Lazarus, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, the adulteress, the centurion, the children, the bleeding woman, the demon possessed and so many others. Each of those stories is rich with a different kind of love than I typically extend to myself.

God who comes near. God who sees all. God who forgives all. God who touches, carries, explains, heals, weeps, praises, teaches, welcomes, helps,  frees, feeds, and sits with us. Make me like you. Teach me to know myself like you know me. Teach me to love myself like you love me.