Flipping the January Page: on Being Invited to Actually Give Myself Grace
On New Year’s Day, I woke up determined to “get my life in order.” A couple of days prior I prepared a very thorough list of tasks aimed at purging myself of days of holiday indulgence and to switch gears to the new year. The list included completing piles of laundry and putting all clothes away, taking down all Christmas decorations and resetting my apartment, going to the grocery store to stock up on healthy foods for resetting my eating habits, and making 2-3 healthy dishes for week.
I awoke at 9:30 or so to the sounds of my husband making coffee. I decided to take my time getting out of bed, deliberately taking some moments to breathe, check social media, and catch up on some news articles. I finally got up around 11 and assisted Chris in making a late breakfast. Knowing I had tasked myself (and Chris) with a smorgasbord of to-dos, I asked Chris if we could postpone our plan to see Star Wars that evening until the following weekend. “Just so I can have the whole day to reset,” I explained. He ever-so-slightly hesitated, but agreed.
I won’t subject you to a play-by-play of the rest of the day’s activities, but by the time 6:30 rolled around, I was knee-deep in miscellaneous craft supplies on my bedroom floor, with a grocery trip and weekly meal prep yet to be conquered. I felt the opposite of refreshed and reset, though I was proud of the meticulously cleaned living room now absent of pine needles. Chris walked into the bedroom, where I slumped onto the bed and cried anxiously, “Oh honey, there’s still so much to do. We have a friend coming Friday and I have to work long days at the hospital the rest of this week… it has to all get done!”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Eva," he softly replied.
“No, you don’t understand! This is the only day I have!” The tears became more anger-filled, exposing the reality that I would not complete everything I had set out to do despite my desperate attempts to cover it. I walked into the living room and slumped onto the couch. Chris sat next to me. “I was hoping that you and I could spend some quality time together today, too. We’re both off from work today. I understand you wanting to get tasks done, but I want us to relax together before we have to go back to work.”
That’s when it hit me. I had not asked my partner what his intentions or wishes for the day were.
I had automatically signed him up for my day of cleaning and task mastering--thanking him for his help, but still not fully acknowledging his own agency during my tunnel-visioned pursuits of reform and task management for their own sakes. I so thoroughly absorbed the cultural messages I had consumed on social media about the need for resolutions and fresh starts at the new year that I failed to offer myself what I have come to understand as the most important commitment for me in this period of my life: self grace, acceptance and kindness, and extending these to my husband, community and the world around me.
I put Christmas away so quickly that I forgot to remind myself of the core message I had just celebrated and reflected on days before: Jesus came in a freaking manger, for crying out loud. Love in human flesh chose to enter a messy, tumultuous world, and chose to love us in the midst of that. Even me. Even me. No one but me had demanded that my day be perfectly organized, and somehow, over time, through life’s experiences, I have too often digested the toxic message that meeting my demands is equivalent to my worth--a message that the own faith tradition I claim and call myself a leader in offers a vital counter-narrative to the world.
What are the messages we tell ourselves and others about who we are? How do the “not enoughs” become narratives that not only deny ourselves self-love (which often for me manifests as an refusal to accept of my limitations) and understanding, but translate to a violence, a shaming, of those around us?
I find myself in a constant dance between responding to the urgency I feel in responding to the world’s realities, and being reminded that who I am at my core is not measured by how many things I get done. So here’s to a 2018 even more committed to self-love: a love grounded in the unconditional love of the Spirit, a love that respects and exercises my agency, my partner’s agency and the agency of all creatures, and that breathes in gratitude even in the midst of unanswered questions, messy homes, and piles of literal or metaphorical arts & crafts on floors.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Eva," he softly replied.
“No, you don’t understand! This is the only day I have!” The tears became more anger-filled, exposing the reality that I would not complete everything I had set out to do despite my desperate attempts to cover it. I walked into the living room and slumped onto the couch. Chris sat next to me. “I was hoping that you and I could spend some quality time together today, too. We’re both off from work today. I understand you wanting to get tasks done, but I want us to relax together before we have to go back to work.”
That’s when it hit me. I had not asked my partner what his intentions or wishes for the day were.
I had automatically signed him up for my day of cleaning and task mastering--thanking him for his help, but still not fully acknowledging his own agency during my tunnel-visioned pursuits of reform and task management for their own sakes. I so thoroughly absorbed the cultural messages I had consumed on social media about the need for resolutions and fresh starts at the new year that I failed to offer myself what I have come to understand as the most important commitment for me in this period of my life: self grace, acceptance and kindness, and extending these to my husband, community and the world around me.
I put Christmas away so quickly that I forgot to remind myself of the core message I had just celebrated and reflected on days before: Jesus came in a freaking manger, for crying out loud. Love in human flesh chose to enter a messy, tumultuous world, and chose to love us in the midst of that. Even me. Even me. No one but me had demanded that my day be perfectly organized, and somehow, over time, through life’s experiences, I have too often digested the toxic message that meeting my demands is equivalent to my worth--a message that the own faith tradition I claim and call myself a leader in offers a vital counter-narrative to the world.
What are the messages we tell ourselves and others about who we are? How do the “not enoughs” become narratives that not only deny ourselves self-love (which often for me manifests as an refusal to accept of my limitations) and understanding, but translate to a violence, a shaming, of those around us?
I find myself in a constant dance between responding to the urgency I feel in responding to the world’s realities, and being reminded that who I am at my core is not measured by how many things I get done. So here’s to a 2018 even more committed to self-love: a love grounded in the unconditional love of the Spirit, a love that respects and exercises my agency, my partner’s agency and the agency of all creatures, and that breathes in gratitude even in the midst of unanswered questions, messy homes, and piles of literal or metaphorical arts & crafts on floors.
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