Who Is So Hard On Herself

Love . . . keeps no record of wrongs.

I WAS SITTING IN MY OFFICE WORKING long after my three kids had fallen asleep. I would rather have been sleeping myself, but with my lengthy to-do list and the overscheduled week ahead, I was stealing minutes wherever I could find them.

To be honest, I felt as if I had been borrowing too many moments from my family and spending them on work. And I was still coming up short, unable to get it all done. I was staring at a computer screen at ten minutes to midnight, but my mind was anything but focused on what I had to do. I was remembering my day, my previous week, my last few years. It was as if my mind was replaying all the moments I had kept in a record of my wrongs.

That’s when the Holy Spirit interrupted me: Love keeps no record of wrongs.

I’ve heard this verse many times. It’s often quoted during weddings since it is part of the well-known chapter about love in 1 Corinthians. But on this night, I wasn’t expecting God to drop those words into my heart. They rippled through my mind, disrupting my internal dialogue of disappointments.

You forgive others. You move on when others have wronged you. You give grace and you are patient when everyone else has hard moments. Yet you have no grace for yourself. You keep an endless record of all your wrongs. Becky, I’ve called you to love others as you love yourself. But you haven’t been very kind to yourself lately. God’s words to me were like medicine for my aching heart.

Sometimes it’s easier to love others than to love ourselves. Isn’t it, Momma? Sometimes, we speak kindly to everyone but ourselves. Don’t we, Momma? But, my friend, the Lord is clear in His Word when He says, “I will forgive their wrongdoing, and I will never again remember their sins” (Hebrews 8:12, CSB). When we confess the sin in our hearts to the Lord, when we ask Him to help us, when we tell Him that how we feel or what we feel has separated us from Him, He removes the shame and the weight and never again remembers our wrongs. And neither should we. Momma, the list of your wonderful accomplishments is so much longer than all the moments where you may feel you missed it. That is a list worth keeping.

Tonight we pray for the momma who can be so hard on herself. Lord, she tries to be patient and kind and always there for her family. She puts everyone else first over and over, and yet at the end of the day, she often replays her worst moments rather than her best. She thinks about what she believes she did wrong and how she let others down. Tonight, Lord, please wrap Your arms around this momma. Help her hear Your voice listing all the reasons she is exactly the momma her family needs. You are proud of her. Help her believe it.

We ask in Jesus’s name, amen.

Lord, help me see that I am worthy of kindness, too, as I tell myself: