What does giving or receiving grace feel like to you?
Do you extend grace towards yourself?
Do you give yourself space to make mistakes and then to make better choices from the learnings of those mistakes.?
Grace is Loving yourself first.
Grace is Being Perfectly Imperfect,
Grace is Given Voluntarily, without conditions,
Grace is Given And Received Freely,
Grace is Kind and Compassionate.
Hello My Friends,
Hubby and I went camping, tenting over the weekend, we were using a new to us tent.
We’d had a trial run at home to ensure all the bits were there and we knew what we were doing.
We were visiting relatives for pre-Christmas mixing and mingling. We erected the tent, blew up the air bed, (got to have some creature comforts, right?) sorted the sleeping bags, then went visiting.
While we were indoors, it rained, the heavens opened and dumped bucket loads of water onto our little tent. Saturating everything inside.
Great time to discover the tent is NOT waterproof, very grateful that other warm and dry sleeping arrangements were made.
Moral of this story is not only check to see if all parts are working, but check to see if the fly and tent are waterproof as well.
Today I want to talk about people being people, and extending grace to yourself and to others.
What is your definition of grace?
“Grace is a very misunderstood term.
Generally it is attributed to religions, and is something God bestows upon us.”
Grace is given freely, with no thought of return, it is given voluntarily without strings or conditions attached.
To me grace embodies a lot of traits, it is an attitude of love, of serving and being served.
It is knowing that people are going to be stressed and tired at this time of the year, and making space for that in the way we respond to others.
Imagine being in a space where you are never offended by what other people say or do.
Not as a doormat, or as someone who feels they are better than another, but from a space of genuine caring and understanding of the other person and of yourself.
Extending grace to ourselves is often the hardest of the graces to give. We have higher expectations of ourselves, than we do of others, and when we mix those expectations we can be harder on ourselves than we’d ever be to anyone else.
Grace comes from your ability to love yourself, if you can not love yourself, how can you give love to anyone else?
The ability to love yourself comes from knowing who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, forgiving yourself for your past mistakes, releasing those emotions and healing the wounds, then growing into the love that only you can have for yourself.
By showing kindness and compassion to other people, you are showing them grace.
Giving them the gift of being where they are, accepting them as they are, and not judging them.
You have your red velvet rope in place, so they can not trample on your garden.
You know who you are and what is important to you, what you will and will not tolerate in your space.
The trick is maintaining your red velvet rope while allowing them the grace to behave as they please.
This may mean you make the choice to leave, or to have a difficult conversation.
Grace is love in action and when you do these things in a way that leaves both yours and their self esteem in tact, you are showing love to both.
Grace may also look like making choices not to attend certain events, events you know can be triggering for yourself or others. These events may bring out the worst behaviour in yourself or others, and by making a deliberate choice to not attend you are loving yourself in advance.
Grace may also look like making a decision ahead of time, deciding how you will act, this could be in relation to the amount and type of alcohol you consume, or the amount and type of food you consume. It might be a decision to not speak to a certain person, or to leave at a certain hour. Only you know your triggers, and only you know your safety points that are needed to be decided on in advance.
Grace might mean you have a friend on speed dial, someone who can be a back up in times of weakness. Someone you can call on to help you stick to your plan, or who can give you an honest out should you need it.
Grace is loving yourself first, when you love yourself, you can give that love to others. Without self love you have nothing to draw on to give to others.
This Christmas season decide in advance how you want your celebrations to look. Give yourself the grace to create those celebrations without regret.
Today’s challenge is to think about how you want to celebrate, who you want to celebrate with, and how you want to feel about yourself and those in your circle of influence.
Until next time…
Extend the hand of grace to yourself and to those around you.
oxoxo Linda.