Letting Go of “Shitty Shoulds”

There have been so many decisions in my life that I have made on the basis of “I should do this or I shouldn’t do that.” This is something that I would like to change because what I’m realizing is that a lot of that is fear and shame based. The reasoning (even though largely sub-conscious) behind it is that there is some perfect and external right way to do things. And, that I need to be constantly aligning with this ideal or punishment may ensue.

I have battled with this for a long time –  this idea that I need to be good. The problem is when are things good enough? When am I good enough? When are you good enough?

I am asking myself some deep questions and maybe they will help you too:

-If I took the pressure of perfection or performance away, who would I be and what would I do?
-If there were no mistakes (only learning opportunities) what would I choose?

I love my faith in and relationship with God. Sadly, what I’m realizing is that I often put God in a box and assume that God is ready to be angry at any moment. I have spent a lot of time feeling like it is easy to lose God’s love. There are definitely moments that I feel a fullness and a sense of completion and peace resting in God’s love for me. Yet, then, I can go right back to pushing myself to perform and believing that God is ready to punish.

As I consider how I want to change. I realize that I want to rest more, laugh more, and trust more. Believe me, my faith in Jesus is still central to who I am but I would like to let go of some of the shackles that I have been in due to religion, rules and performance. Truthfully, many times I have walked right into those shackles believing somehow that if I keep the rules and if I do well – that the chaos and any scary or out of control feelings can be kept at bay. But, when I am in this weird, self-inflicted rule prison, I don’t get to enjoy my moments fully.

Another thing is that I think it is time for me to accept is that I am awkward and quirky. On my recent trip to Seattle nearly all of my friends described me to my new boyfriend as awkward or quirky but they quickly followed it with the statement, “and that is what we love best about her.”  Isn’t that funny? The very thing that I get ashamed about is the place where my friends actually love me- not when I’m perfect or performing well but when I’m real. I have to imagine that God loves us too when we are our naked, real, not perfect selves in the middle of the mess. Maybe that is what keeps some people from going to church or turning to God – the idea that you have to get cleaned up and perfected before being loved. But, I know in my gut that it is truly the opposite – God loves us first. He loves us in our most desperate of messy middles. He loves us enough to go into the messy middle with us, not waiting for us to get to the other side. I just pictured being stuck in the mud and Jesus jumping in the mud with me (with us) – so, willing to get dirty with us.

This lesson is one that I’ve been in the process of learning personally as I embrace the fact that I am imperfect and that is wonderfully okay. I am loved and so are you just as you are, just where you are.

I am reminded of the poem, “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. I love these lines from it:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Big hugs, Shelley