A couple of conversations today have highlighted for me that we are so often caught up in the blame game. We need to be right, and so we declare others to be wrong, or against us, we bemoan or circumstances and claim our right to react to them even if that reation is destructive to our wellbeing.

When we choose to enter the blame game we all to often absolve ourselves of any responsibility for the decisions we make. Our mantra becomes “I did that because…”, and we excuse ourselves because we have been wronged or hurt or damaged by another or a circumstance beyond our control.

In some ways this may be true, and may become an unfolding revelation as we ponder a less than perfect and even painful childhood, a traumatic event in our adult life or simply a series of scenarios that leave us feelig defensiv and in need of protection. But we cannot be healthy and stay behind a shield of excuses, for in doing so we shrink into ourselves and become less than we might be, ultimately we need, for our healing to become aware that we are the ones who choose the paths we take. This may require years of therapy, and help along the way, it will certainly require that we are gentle and understanding with ourselves and choose on a day by day, moment by moment basis to step out from behind our defensive shields and grow into life.

Life is full of choices, and we can all, al choose life, we can choose life from the pits darkness and depression and from the mountain tops. We can decide that our need to be right is overcome by our need for life, and life in all its fullnes, we can embrace our brokeness and choose life, choosing to step over the obstacles of our own making by embracing our faults, flaws and even our scars.

I am learning to abandon my own desire to appear right, and eplace that desire with a longing for grace, and only through embracing grace do I set myself free. On this journey I find the one who who did not; “cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. (Philipians 2)

Being selfless when you have been hurt requires a special kind of humility, a humility that comes from knowing, accepting and loving yourself. That of course can only come through accepting that you are loved. deeply truly and completely loved, and I have to ask myself why that is so hard. So HARD!

Once again I am led back to the cross, the place of sacrifice and deep humility, the place where there is no choice but to let go and let God, which sounds like a cliche, yet leads us to the deepest place of self-knowledge, accptance and pure holy love. Maybe that is the truest, purest place of all, heaven touching earth and revealing glory even in brokenness, even where we need the touch of deepest healing.

In choosing  incarnation, choosing to be God with us, Jesus chose the path of suffreing, he chose to enter the depths of our reality, knew frailty and vulnerability and through that encountered complete desolation and rejection. In Jesus, God has given himself completely to us, and through him we glimpse the fullness of the glory and possibilities of our lives. The problem is that when we insist on being right, insist on being perfect and whole, we become brittle and we loose ourselves, but through Jesus we are called to embrace the Christ-life, a life that frees us from our small selves and draws us into a place where we are able to embrace and include and the need to be right, the need to blame and create us and them scenarios falls away.

So here I am in my brokenness asking that we dare to lay aside our demands of being right and embrace our lives just as they are allowing the Spirit to lead us forward!