The first discipline I am trying to build is that of patience, and a little self-forgiveness. Looking at the past two days, without patience I think I would have just given up and declared myself a failure. So far my room looks as if someone ransacked it (I really want to have a neat room). I had two essays due and had written all my research on pink 4 by 6 notecards. Now they are strewn all over the place. Just imagine someone of my organisational capability attempting to write the bibliography....i took almost the same amount of time to write my essay! Miraculously I have not lost my cool once. It is really God's grace that I didn't burst into tears when I found out yesterday, two hours before the deadline, that I had not met the formal requirements for my sociology essay.
This is what I would normally have felt like, under such, but instead, I was peaceful and calm. I would normally also feel very angry with myself, for being so absent-minded that I somehow missed reading the file on essay requirements.
I am glad. I would really like to have a great essay and good grades, etc. etc. But I also need sleep and a regular schedule (I am prone to getting depressed near the end of the year). Perhaps this patience and self-forgiveness thing is basically about surrendering my perfectionism. I know my essays could have been better. But I also know that I couldn't have made them better given the time I had and first-year blurness...and I only know it only from hindsight, anyway. Somehow in the past I always thought that if I knew how to do it better later then I should have done it like that. But mistakes are mistakes and regret does nothing.
So I am learning to be free, and I really thank God for the grace He's given me to live through this week.
1 comment:
Amen.
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