At first glance, your response may be, “I can forgive and I do forgive,” and I am sure that you do. But I’m wondering how you do at forgiving yourself? Ah! That’s a little more difficult. And there are a couple of reasons that so many of us struggle with this.
First, when we make a mistake or hurt someone, it is easy to carry that guilt around, repeatedly beating ourselves up. Telling ourselves, “I’m just an idiot for the things that I say or do to people,” becomes part of our story. The longer we repeat this to ourselves, the more ingrained it becomes. We find it much easier to forgive other’s mistakes, in part, because their misdeeds are typically not a part of our story. But our story, told long enough, begins to impact our identity and how we view ourselves. The best thing that we can do is to cut those mistakes out of our story. They are mistakes – not character flaws – and we will benefit by eliminating them from our self-narrative.
The second reason we struggle with forgiving ourselves is that it is easier to forgive others, particularly those whom we love. And if we are honest, we often don’t love ourselves. In Matthew 22:39, Jesus gives us the second greatest commandment – for us to “Love our neighbor as we love ourselves.” Perhaps that is why we find it difficult to love others at times – because we aren’t sure how to – we don’t even love ourselves.
We worship a God who offers us forgiveness. And if He can forgive us, perhaps we should do some self-care by forgiving the person that we can’t live without – ourselves.