How strong are you? Part 2

After yesterdays blog I wanted to give everybody some advice on answering our question. How strong is your forgiveness, empathy and grace? Well I am about to make it a whole lot stronger. Please do not ignore this advice.I try not to give any unless I am sure it's correct.
The MOST important person who needs your grace and forgiveness is you. That's right, you. All the bad crap you did, the mistakes you made, the commandments you broke and all the rest need to go on one long list. Ask for grace and forgiveness and then let it go. You are not perfect and the whole reason we are celebrating is so you can get forgiveness. "But I did really bad stuff" and so did I. I was granted forgiveness and shown grace and I knew I did not deserve any of it.
Then a not so funny thing happened. I never forgave myself. Oh I could grant you forgiveness or have empathy for a lot of folks but not me. I hung onto every mistake I'd made in the last 20 years. And beat myself up over it over and over again. At some point I was a bigger judge of my sins than God. How's that for a big ego? He forgives me but I know better. Nobody can be that arrogant. And I wasn't. I was scared. Afraid to turn all my crap over and let God take it. What if he turned away from me too? Funny how brave you have to be just to ask to feel better about yourself. He did not turn away. He embraced me. He still does.
Guess what happened? He gave me the gift of grace so I can pass it on. And I try to as often as possible. He granted me forgiveness so I can do the same. So now you know the way to become stronger. And it is all in your power to do it. So will you? Do you want it? All you need to ask? Ask yourself for forgiveness? And then grant it and rejoice. For now it's your turn to pass it on. And it feels so good to do so.

Till next........