You Have Permission to Fail--Me.

The other day I was going through my notepad app on my phone.  I was trying to come up with a blog post since it's been months since I've last written anything.  When I go for walks, sometimes I am struck with what I think are profound thoughts that I then talk-to-text into the app.

There was an thought about giving a person permission to fail. In this day and age we are constantly bombarded by perceived perfection.  Perfect family pictures, exotic vacations, mouthwatering dinners, group shots showing friends having a good time when my invitation seemed to have been misplaced. I've watched and attempted hair tutorials and come up short.

I try my best to be authentic in my posts.  Perhaps you've read my post from 2015 called My Not so Thankful Thanksgiving. My transparency shows my failure and how I've learned from it.  My plan was to expound on our perceived short comings and encourage people to lighten up on themselves.

As I began to work on that idea more, I was struck with a deeper message.  What if I gave people permission to fail me? What if I made a conscious decision to offer people the same grace God graciously gave me through his Son, Jesus Christ? Simply giving it to them without being asked or apologized to.

What does that look like? What does that feel like? Why on earth would we set ourselves up to allow people to let us down?

It means, even if I'm not invited out somewhere, it's not the end of my world.  I recently had a good friend go to a women's event (that I was invited to last year) with a  group of friends she's close with. In that group we have a few mutual friends.  I wasn't asked to go.  It stung for a second, but I didn't let it wound me.  I understand in group settings like that sometimes your best friends isn't in charge of the guest list, and that's ok.

My husband used to tell me wen we were first married that he "would let me down, but Jesus never would." Al Barz was true to his word.  His redirection to Jesus was annoying at the time, but as I matured in my faith, its truth was freeing.  I am not looking to people for my emotional stability because my stability comes from my relationship with my Savior.

Plans are going to fall through, kids are going to break stuff, coaches are going to not play your son, people will cut you off in traffic and that's ok. What's not ok is an attitude that "I am more worthy of grace than the people annoying me." By not forgiving quickly, but keeping a record of perceived wrong, we are saying we are more important that the other person. If we call ourselves Christians and can't seem to move above, around or through issues, we've missed the point of God's grace in our lives.

Does that mean that we stay in situations where we are treated poorly? No! Certainly not. If our "friends" are only available on their terms, that's not a healthy friendship.  However, if we have friends that haven't reached out to us in a while, let's not count how many months since we've last talked and instead pick up the phone and let's reach out to them.  I know it's hard to be the one doing the reaching, but I also know that the person you may not have talked to in a while may be going throughs some hard situations.

Let's love people where they are and stop making them come to us all the time.

The group I love the most and the hardest. Thanksgiving 2017.