As I began my Getting Healthy Quest, I often wrestled with feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t holding myself accountable enough, I wasn’t burning enough calories in my workouts, the scale wasn’t moving fast enough, I wasn’t working hard enough. I had all these boxes that I needed to check before I felt like I was doing it “right” and I always felt like I was coming up short. Yeah, I didn’t realize it, but I was battling a serious case of Perfectionism. I had never considered myself a Perfectionist because well, the way I saw it, nothing was ever “perfect” in my life; I mean I was trying to get it there, but it just never seemed to happen.
You see the irony, right? I hope so, because I certainly didn’t. So I kept working it, telling myself it had to be better, I had to be better. That, my friends, is an exhausting way to live. You might even know this for yourself. It leads to overwhelm. It can make you feel like you’re never good enough. Like you are simply forever stuck. I wondered how was I ever going to get out of this place?
Enter Grace. Literally, Saving Grace. Being a Christian, “Grace” is supposed to be an important word in my lexicon, but to be honest, I am just beginning to understand it and its magnitude. I hope you’re farther along on this path than I am. I’ve begun to realize that Grace tells me I am Enough. Just as I am. It hears all those lies I tell myself about not being enough and says “not true.” Really? I’m enough?Just as I am? This was a revelation to me. Yep. Even if my BMI is in the “overweight” range, even if I haven’t exercised in a month and even when I tell myself I’m not doing it right, God bestows his Grace on me and accepts me as I am. I’m beginning to understand that if God accepts me where I am, I should do the same.
But acceptance of where I am doesn’t mean I stay in this spot forever. As Max Lucado says, “God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you there.” God wants more for us. He wants better for us. He wants us to move toward Him. For a while I had trouble figuring out how to give myself grace while also calling myself to a higher standard of behavior and a better way of being. How could I give myself grace and say it was “okay” that I binge on nachos and cheese dip when I knew God really didn’t want me to live that way?
Then I realized I was looking at it the wrong way. I had to answer God’s call for me to practice honoring Him like I was talking about back in Small Step #18 “Know Your Why.” I had to recognize that when I concentrate on the practice of honoring rather than on the checklist of what I have or have not done for the day, I put the focus on Him and what He does rather than what I do. I am more able to extend myself Grace because it’s not about judging myself on what I’ve accomplished, but about how I’ve honored Him.
Being able to acknowledge my own struggle has enabled me to grant others grace in theirs. I know how difficult it is for me to keep my daily honoring practice, so why should I judge others in whatever their challenges are? Quite frankly, it’s none of my business; it’s between them and their Higher Power. And the cool thing I’ve noticed is that the more I extend grace to others, the more I feel it from the world around me and the more I am able to give it to myself. It’s a beautiful, virtuous cycle that each of us can extend one small step at a time. And we all know it’s in the small steps that the big things get done.
