dailydatewithgod

Of all the lessons that I have been called to learn, self-acceptance has continued to be one of the most challenging ones for me.  I am someone who has spent a larger portion of my life criticizing, belittling, making wrong, judging my behavior, my body, my thinking, my decisions, etc.  It is a slow and continual process to be willing to adapt and see myself as God sees me, to let go of the idea that how I see me is correct.  Oddly enough this came into practice as I was losing weight and my body began to change before my eyes.  There were days when I did not recognize who I saw in the mirror and so I began to pray a simple prayer each day: “God help me to see me as You see me.”  I thought the prayer was simply about how I saw my physical body, but I have come to realize that I want to see myself as God sees me in all ways.  God’s eyes are much more loving, forgiving, tolerant, compassionate, gentle, and freeing.  When I take on God’s views, all of a sudden I have room to be and move.  I can make mistakes and my life is not a complete mess.  There is no need of perfection and always doing the “right” thing because I am connected to a Greater Intelligent Being who sees my life in the context of the whole.  There are plenty of opportunities to learn what works and what doesn’t.  There are opportunities to notice what brings me closer to peace of heart and mind versus what distances me from that and causes dis-ease.  There is no magic formula to get it right.  There is no getting through this messy human experience without some scrapes.  But even with all of that, I have learned I do not need to throw myself under the bus with how I see myself.  When I do that I am criticizing God’s Creation and who am I to say that I know better than God?  I certainly did not keep the earth spinning while I slept last night so that I would be able to see the sun this morning.  So maybe I can be open to trusting that since that same power created me, that power knows better than I.  My prayer for us today is that we be open to seeing the one thing about ourselves that we most readily condemn with the eyes and hearts of the compassionate God that created that part of us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen