“His grace is always enough for you.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9

I was going to give this the title ‘Give Yourself Grace’, but I somehow wanted to call it ‘Waves Of Grace’ instead, and at the time I wasn’t really sure why. I think its because waves are steady. They keep coming. They’re not always the same, some are bigger or stronger, some are smaller, but they keep coming, wave upon wave. It’s the same with grace. Sometimes we need to extend a lot of grace to someone, and sometimes just a tiny wave is needed, just flowing over the surface of something, over some little issue or idle comment. Sometimes, some days, we don’t need to extend that much grace towards ourselves either, just a little wave will carry us and see us through. But other times we need a big wave of grace. Or more than just one. Lots of big, repetitive waves of grace! And the good news is, there is enough grace. There is always enough grace available to us and for us. I want to encourage you to not resist that. Don’t fight those waves, but surrender to them, receive them. Let God fill you with His grace, so that you can extend that same grace to yourself and to others because we all need grace.

Grace, giving grace, also means forgiving – letting things go. You don’t want annoyance or frustration and impatience with yourself or anyone else to weigh you down and cloud your day. Forgive yourself so that you can forgive others. Keep those waves of grace flowing, so that all that frustration and impatience can be washed away. There’s a beautiful quote from the book ‘The Light Between Oceans’ about forgiveness:

“I can forgive and forget… it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.”  -M.L. Stedman

My desire is to be able to readily forgive others and be soft and kind towards them, but I’ve come to realise that I can’t be soft towards others while being harsh towards myself. I can’t be as patient and lenient with others as I would like to be, if I don’t extend that same grace and patience towards myself. I was actually quite disappointed when I found that out because I wanted to be able to push and whip myself really hard, while being gentle and patient with others. But it doesn’t work that way. We need grace and I need to be able to receive and extend grace to myself first. We are all on a journey, none of us are perfect and we make mistakes. Some days more than others. And we need to be able to forgive ourselves and give ourselves grace.

Be kind to yourself and then let your kindness flood the world.

Here’s to fresh grace every day.