Week 20: Forgive yourself for a mistake you made

This is loaded for a lot of reasons. As a Christian, "forgiveness" is always top of mind. It's kind of like a parasite. It lives with me under my skin, makes me sick, and plays tricks on me. Jesus died for the sake of forgiveness, which I guess goes to show how challenging this concept is.

Here's the thing--I'm actually quite skilled at forgiving. I'm a "let's move on and learn from this" kind of person. It's painful for me to hold on to things that make me uncomfortable. I'd much rather forgive and forget. But forgiving myself, that's a whole other issue.

I'll be the first to raise my hand and ask for forgiveness for an error I made, and in some cases, errors that I had no involvement in just to move things along. Hello, toxic trait.

For the sake of this article, I'm going to forgive myself for something.

I have been wrestling with my faith for years now. Several years ago, I left my hometown, my bubble. I met people who were starkly different from me with different upbringings, religions, ethnicities, backgrounds, etc. It was like I woke up one day and realized there was a world outside of Tennessee and the U.S. for that matter. Suddenly, "For God so loved the world..." had more meaning.

As I learned more about how others in this world experienced life, I learned that my bubble sheltered me in dangerous ways.

It was easy to think that my judgments were accurate when everything I thought I knew was presented to me via outdated textbooks, word of mouth, or highly biased news sources. But when I discovered that hardships are more often inherited than they are invited or more unconsented than requested, my rose-colored glasses shattered.

I love Schitt's Creek and there's this fabulous conversation between Moira and Johnny Rose that constantly creeps into my head. They receive an enormous family portrait that was previously on a wall in their mansion. Their faces, stern and serious. Alexis' face, painted over a model who stood in for her for the portrait.

"It's funny when I look at that portrait now, I find myself wondering, "Were we really that happy back then?" asked Johnny.

"Yes," responded Moira. "We were," nodded Johnny. "Deliriously happy," said Moira.

If you look at their experience in Schitt's Creek against their life before they lost everything, you see their happiness was in a bubble. It was delusional, and therefore, blissful. That was me. Delusional and blissful. Not a care in the world, except in my judgment of others.

Part of the reason I have struggled to forgive myself for being so shortsighted in my previous life is that I'm afraid of what those who stayed behind in that life might think of me. Because I'm pro-life, vote blue, hate this Christian nationalism (or nationalism in general) movement with every fiber of my being, and am critical of the church, I’m afraid that people from my bubble might either hate me or call me regularly to tell me to go to church.

Since I first moved, I can't tell you how frequently people would call and tell me to go to church, regardless of if I attended church regularly. I'm not kidding. By moving to New York City, I was on the road to sin in their eyes. Nothing made me not want to go to church quite like someone calling me to say, "You need Jesus" unprompted. Spoiler alert: I've never left Him. But the judgment I’ve received has held me back from being open about how I see the world.

And so, right here, right now, I forgive myself for not seeing the bigger picture. I forgive myself for letting my bubble get the best of me. I forgive myself for feeling inferior in my faith because of people in my own community. I forgive myself for branching out. I have to forgive myself because when I give myself the grace to see myself as I am now, I'm proud of who I have become. More so, I love how this big world has shaped me.