Becoming By Val & Bruce

What grace looks like

There is a voice in your head that has opinions about you. This post is about that voice — and the One who knows you better than it ever could.

There is a voice in your head that has opinions about you.

If you are anything like us, that voice has been speaking for a long time, and it has not always been kind. This post is about that voice — what it is, what it isn’t, and how the Lord is asking you to listen to a different one.

The voice

Most of us have a running commentary about ourselves that we barely notice. You should have known better. Why did you say that. Why can’t you just. You always. You never. What is wrong with you. The sentences are familiar enough that we mistake them for the truth.

For some of us, the voice grew up alongside us. For others, it arrived later — through a marriage where we were told what was wrong with us, or a season where we kept failing at something we wanted to be good at. The voice came in through whatever door was open.

And once it has a foothold, it grows. That thing you did becomes the kind of person you are. A misread expression on someone’s face becomes evidence. A memory you’d forgotten becomes evidence. A moment that wasn’t actually about you becomes evidence. The voice is not reporting the facts. It is building a case.

That voice is not always telling you the truth. And even when it is naming something real, it is rarely naming it in proportion. The harshness is not the same as honesty. The two can sound alike from the inside, which is part of what makes the voice so hard to question.

A therapist’s question

Bruce

When I started seeing my therapist, I came in believing I was the problem in my marriage. In an effort to find peace, I had begun simply assuming that whatever my wife said about me was true — what I thought, what I did, why I did it. If she said I was the problem, I was. I was hoping that adopting her version of me would somehow let us live together more peacefully.

The first sessions met me in that state. I told him, with great earnestness, what a horrible person I was and what I needed to change. I think he initially took me at my word.

But after a couple of sessions, he started pushing back. Not harshly. With questions. Why do you think that? What evidence do you actually see for it? What does your heart tell you? What does the Spirit tell you?

The questions perplexed me. I was not used to applying that kind of scrutiny to my own self-condemnation. The condemnation had felt obvious. It had felt true. But under his questions, I could no longer hold the version of myself I had agreed to believe. The cracks started to show, and through the cracks something I can only describe as my spirit screaming came through — finally. You are listening. The light was breaking through.

The habits were well set. Each time I came back, I would revert to the old narrative. Until one session he asked the question that took my breath away.

What would you tell a friend in your exact situation?

I told him the question wasn’t fair. I knew exactly what I would tell them. It was exactly what he had been telling me. He knew it. I knew it. The impact was so big I felt it in my body as well as my mind. It was undeniable.

The question didn’t change my narrative immediately. But I could never embrace the old lies the same way again.

What I came to see is that his view of me had changed before mine had. He saw me, more accurately than I was seeing myself, before I could see myself that way. Some readers may need to hear that part. If you cannot yet see yourself with compassion, find someone who can see you that way first. Borrow their sight until your own returns.

But what about when we were really wrong

The friend question can fall apart, if we are honest.

The reframe works easily when we are essentially innocent — when the harshness in us is exaggerating something small, or generalizing something that doesn’t deserve to be generalized. Of course I would tell a friend in that situation that they were being too hard on themselves. That move is available.

But there are times with all of us when we are carrying weight that is not made of misperceptions. Cruel words. Unkind acts. Things we said in our marriages that we genuinely regret. Things we did that we wish we could take back. Real wrongs. Words and choices that hurt people who deserved better. We don’t get to wave those away by asking what we would tell a friend, because what we would tell a friend in that situation is yes, that was wrong, and you should make it right.

The work my therapist did with me was not to absolve me of real wrongs. It was to put them in proportion — to let me see that being wrong about some things is not the same as being wrong as a person. The mistakes were real. The harshness was distorting what they meant. We all have those regrets. Some are big. Many are small. And we still deserve grace.

I learned what grace looked like long before I had a word for it.

Bruce

When I was about seven or eight, my grandfather asked me to help him move a tractor and trailer to a lower field. He drove one rig, I drove the other. Before we started, he reminded me — emphatically, making sure I was listening — to make a very wide turn when I left the corral, because of the trailer behind me. I assured him I would.

Then I cut the corner.

The trailer hooked the gate on the way out and rolled it into an ugly ball. You need to understand: this was a brand new aluminum gate, lightweight and beautiful, recently installed. The other gates on the farm were old and heavy and wooden. This one was my grandfather’s pride and joy. And I had just destroyed it.

I followed him down the field in pure terror. When I finally flagged him down and told him what had happened, I watched his face. There was an instant where I thought I saw frustration. But it was almost immediately replaced with kindness, and with what I can only call pure love. He paused. Then he said, simply: “I warned you about cutting the corner. But it’s okay.”

We went back to the corral and tried, together, to straighten the gate. Hammers, pry bars, anything we could find. By the time we finished, I thought it looked even worse. But we hung it. And it stayed there for the rest of his life.

Someone might think he left it hanging as a reminder of my mistake. I know that’s not why he did it. For me, that gate hung for all those years as a reminder of his grace, and of his love for me. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. I can still feel his love.

That was the greatest act of grace I have ever seen. And the greatest act of love.

He never restored the gate to what it had been. It stayed bent. But the love that hung it bent was the same love that had warned me about the corner, and the same love that taught me, without saying it in words, what grace looks like.

Many of us are living with bent gates. The things we wish we could un-say. The choices we cannot un-make. The people we hurt who are not waiting around for our amends. Self-compassion, when there is a real wrong involved, is not pretending the gate is straight. It is letting the gate hang where it hangs, and letting yourself be loved anyway.

Grace

We have come to love the word grace. We use it more than we used to.

Grace is what God gives knowing the worst about us. He is not fooled into thinking we are better than we are. He sees us accurately and completely — including the wrongs, including the parts of us we cannot bear to look at — and loves us anyway. He knows what is wrong with us. He also understands what happened to us. And He loves us regardless. That is the essence of grace.

The harsh voice, when it is loudest, claims a kind of authority. I’m just being realistic. I’m just being honest with myself. But the voice is claiming to know more about you than the Lord claims to know. The Lord, who actually knows everything you have ever done and everything that has ever happened to you, responds to that knowledge with grace. The voice, with its much smaller view, responds with condemnation. One of those responses is wrong, and it is not the one coming from heaven.

Father, forgive them

On the cross, the Savior offered a prayer for the people who were directly killing Him.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

This has always been read as a teaching about forgiving others — and it is. But it is also a teaching about how grace is given. The Savior did not offer that prayer because the people killing Him were innocent. They weren’t. He offered it because, even in their guilt, they did not fully know what they were doing. Their actions were one thing. The fuller picture — what shaped them, what blinded them, what they were carrying — was something only the Father could see in full.

That same prayer extends to us. Not because we did nothing wrong. But because none of us — not even when we are being most ruthlessly self-critical — fully knows what we did or what was driving us when we did it. We do not see the whole of ourselves. Only the Lord can. And He, who sees, responds with grace.

Light

If condemnation is darkness, grace is light. And darkness cannot exist in the presence of light.

When the harsh voice is loud, the work is not to fight the voice into submission. The work is to let the light in. The voice cannot stay where the light enters. It will lose its hold on its own.

The Lord has promised that the light, once received, grows. That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. The perfect day is the destination. Each piece of light you let in now is part of how you get there.

If the harsh voice is loud in you right now, we want to say to you what we wish someone had said to us when ours was loudest.

The voice is not telling you the truth. You are not what it says you are. Yes, you have done things you regret. So have we. So have all of us. But the Lord knows what is wrong with you, and He also knows what happened to you, and He loves you anyway. That is grace. That is the light. And it is being offered to you right now, whether you can feel it or not.

Be the friend to yourself that you would be to anyone else in your situation. Borrow that sight from someone else if you cannot yet generate it on your own. Let the light in.

It will grow.

The Lord knows what is wrong with you. He also knows what happened to you. And He loves you anyway. That is grace. Let it in.

Have you found your way to grace — for yourself or for someone else?

If something here resonates with something you have lived, we would love to hear it. Comments are moderated with kindness.