Forgiving Ourselves by Wendy Ulrich

Author:Wendy Ulrich [Ulrich, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Inspiration
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2008-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Principle #2: Recognizing the Coexistence of Good and Bad

A second help in admitting mistakes is the ability to see failure and success as coexisting in one person without either one being all-defining. We spend a lot of time trying to distinguish good and evil so we can stay away from evil and cherish good. It can seem counterintuitive to foster a worldview that allows good and bad to coexist in the same person without the bad tainting or undoing all the good. But when we think any drop of ink in our pure water of goodness will ruin the whole of who we are, it is hard to admit being inky. While a single serious sin compromises our virtue, we can have weaknesses galore and still have strengths and gifts as well. Better to see ourselves as a mixed bag of multicolored stones—mistakes and successes, weakness and gifts, challenges and triumphs—than as a glass of inky water because of any mistake.

It is hard to see corrections as helpful instead of degrading and demoralizing unless we can deeply accept both strength and weakness, success and failure, trials and joys as part of the normal range of human experience for us and every person. To forgive ourselves for being less than average we must first accept ourselves for being average, and the average person is neither the embodiment of evil nor the personification of virtue. When even being average is an embarrassment, actual sins are simply too shameful to admit or repent of, and without repentance we can never get to self-forgiveness.

We can practice specific skills to increase our tolerance for being a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses. First, we can practice acting nondefensively when corrected, even if at first we feel stung and angry. My husband is an expert at two simple phrases that come in handy here: “That’s helpful. Let me think about that” and “Thank you for telling me that—tell me more.” At first these phrases may give lip service only to humility, but they create a dignified space for us to retreat into and ponder. They give us time to comfort the part of us that hates being wrong, remember that we really do want to know how we can improve, and like and respect ourselves for getting better at humility.

The temple is a good place to practice nondefensiveness and the joys of being ordinary. In God’s house, there are many rules in place to help things runs smoothly, and there are hundreds of workers and patrons and staff members going about with differing sensibilities about what is appropriate or what makes for a good experience. Sometimes we may run up against a rule or a person at odds with our own expectations. After all, we each have different ideas about what we need to feel welcome rather than criticized, and we all seem to believe that in the temple we have the right only to the former and never the latter. Yet God is also trying

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