Mental Health Monday…

…on Tuesday. Yes, I’m a day late publishing this post.

I hope you’ll forgive me.

But I also hope I’ll forgive myself.

Because that’s the part we leave out too often, isn’t it? We’re so busy forgiving other people (not that we always do that well, but that’s another post) that we forget to give ourselves a little grace.

If we forgive ourselves — and it’s not a one-and-done kind of thing — then it’s much easier for us to forgive others, too. Because we come to realize that forgiveness happens in spite of ourselves, in spite of whatever we’ve done, in spite of our mistakes.

I spent years as a practicing Christian hearing sermons about this but I wasn’t able to take any of it in, probably because I was so busy Being A Good Churchgoer instead of truly living as a practicing Christian. YMMV.

Once I got myself out of the pew, mostly the one in my head, I could think about forgiveness without attaching it to faith, (Which reminds me of how random faith is, anyway: When our younger daughter was in Seville recently, she and her friends visited the city’s great cathedral. “Who’s the dude hanging from the ceiling?” said one friend. Oh, just Jesus Christ, that dude.)

Forgiveness might be a wonderful thing that has a place in many religious faiths and spiritual practices, but it’s also a wonderful thing that can be separate from all of them. If you forgive yourself for making a bad pot of coffee, for missing a deadline, for skipping a day of exercise, for all the small things that happen, you can strengthen your “forgiveness muscles” to forgive yourself for much bigger missteps.

To you, I apologize for a late blog post. To myself, I practice forgiveness and keep moving. Namaste.