With my slew of diagnoses, there are clusters of days when I am out of commission. We are talking horizontal in bed, unable to think, see, or do anything. They are long and they are miserable, and there is nothing to do but wait it out. However, it is the first day coming out of such a flare that is trash day for my emotions. 

I am flooded with all the things I wish I could do and cannot, all the things I have missed out on and will for the foreseeable future, things I should be doing but am not, things I could be doing but haven’t planned for. My mind travels down a million different guilt trips that overwhelm and confuse me, leaving me feeling like a lost, aimless failure. 

I suspect I’m not the only chronically ill person who struggles with this particular dung heap of thoughts and emotions, and I know every human being feels, at least on occasion, as though they aren’t enough.

So let’s just take a minute. Breathe. And be nice to ourselves.

I profoundly struggle with this one, guys. I don’t think it is because I want to beat myself up; rather, I have set myself a standard of perfection that is impossible to reach. I want to know everything I ought to know, use my time in the best way, and do the utmost I can with every minute of my life. Phew!

As a Christian, Jesus is my standard. He is perfect, beautiful, kind, wise, witty, strong, gentle, compassionate, bold, good, and loving. He should be the standard. I should try to be like Him. The part where I mess up is when I don’t cut myself slack for not being exactly like Him right now. 

Life is a road, a narrow one, precipitous, rocky, and rough, but it leads somewhere. I will be made perfect as Christ is perfect at the destination, but I have not arrived yet. That’s how it is supposed to work. Sometimes, there is no way to know before hand where to place each and every step. Sometimes you can’t know a rock is slippery until you step on it. Life is learning, adapting, improving. It’s gradual, not all at once. 

God pours a never-ending fountain of grace over every Christian’s head, and if He no longer holds our sin against us, neither should we.

So today, let’s cut ourselves some slack. We are doing the best we can.