I’ve been asking patients all week if they are ready for Christmas. Sadly, most of them are. I say sadly because I’m not one of those people who is organized for Christmas. Despite the fact that I know it’s going to show up at the same time every year, I always get caught up in over-thinking what to buy my wife.
I’m always trying to find that “perfect” present for her.
Yet in truth, she just grateful to get anything. There have been times when I have hit a home run with a present, and times when I have honestly struck out pretty pathetically. Yet the funny thing is her response is always the same. She is just grateful that I tried to put some thought into getting her something.
And it’s funny that some of the “best gifts’ that I’ve come up with have actually been purchased not out of design, but out of desperation.
One Christmas I bought her a laminator from Costco. She was heavily into scrapbooking at the time and it looked like a really thoughtful gift. Honestly, it was two days before Christmas, I was desperately trying to find something that she would like. It’s the same with the bidet that is attached to the toilet in her bathroom. Seems like a really thoughtful gift, honestly my version of a Hail Mary.
Maybe that’s why I procrastinate each year, and end up panicking a couple of days before Christmas. It seems I do my best work when I’m under a lot of stress.
But what I’m really struggling with this year is the knowledge that I can’t give you what I really want you to have. I’ve been sitting in my office now on the evening of Thursday the 22nd for about three hours, trying to find the right words for this reflection, and I realized all of a sudden that it just can’t be done.
Because the gift that I want you to have is a gift you can only give yourself.
I can tell you a million times how wonderful I think you are. I can write paragraphs on why I believe in the divinity of human consciousness, and how that spark of life in each one of us is probably the rarest thing in the universe. I can tell you all of the amazing things that you do, and how the goodness inside of you is so inspiring.
But if you don’t believe it, it doesn’t matter what I tell you.
I don’t claim to be perfect at this, far from it, but over the last few months as I’ve done some really deep work on my soul, I’ve come to find a new level of acceptance for myself. I had a situation recently where I made a mistake on something, and rather than spiral down into the pit of constant self derision, I was able to realize that the mistake I made was just a symptom of being human, and that it didn’t change the value of my soul.
How I wish I could help you feel that way about yourself.
Because I’m guessing that you struggle sometimes to give yourself the space to be human. I’m pretty certain that at some point you’ve questioned the worth of your soul and the value of your presence in the world based on something that you thought, said or did that you felt was incompatible with being a “good person”.
I’m fairly confident that you have times were you give grace to everybody else, and yet withhold it from yourself.
We seem to have this messed up idea that only perfection is acceptable, and that anything less makes us broken. I’ve talked to people who’ve come from terrible situations, and who have overcome so many challenges, and yet the biggest challenges they face is hugging their own soul in true and complete acceptance.
And as much as I’d like to help you feel that way, the truth is that the only way to receive that gift is to give it to yourself.
So this Christmas season I’m asking you to give one more gift. Whether you are someone who knows exactly what to get and is done by September, or whether you like me are one of those people who desperately struggle for inspiration on December 24, I’d like you to place one gift under the tree, for the person who you probably neglect most in your life.
And be ready to receive it when you open it.
It doesn’t have to be total acceptance of everything. It doesn’t even have to be forgiveness for some “mistake” that is probably much greater in your mind that it is anybody else’s. All I want you to do this for one minute to just wrap yourself up in your own arms, giving yourself a big hug, and tell yourself that you are enough.
And believe it.
Of all the gifts you give, none will make those who love you happier than seeing you be happy with yourself.
May you find peace and joy this Christmas season, and may you give yourself the gift of grace and understanding.
Because you are worth it. You really, really are.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings