Giving Yourself Permission

Sometimes you just need to give yourself permission.

For five years I’ve been working on this “writing” thing toward traditional publication. Went to conferences, worked on my novels, built an online platform, blogged, edited and revised. Created a newsletter and spent time and money engaging subscribers. Step by step, I plodded toward progress.

Then life hit me with a 4×4 last summer and left me reeling. Head pounding, breath gasping, heart wallowing, I fought. Fought not to break again. Fought to not let the sadness drag me under. Fought to figure out what to do.

But I wasn’t winning the fight.

Week by week went by and my writing was left untouched. Meaning week by week, the momentum I’d worked years to build, dwindled.

No, no, no! I can’t. I can’t let that happen.

But the mental weight was real. The emotional tidal wave was strong. I wasn’t strong enough to fight it.

Finally …. I gave myself permission.

Permission to be okay with not accomplishing. Permission to not keep up with my own expectation. Permission to let go of the progress, even if it meant starting all the work over again. Permission to give myself time to simply heal, recoup and adjust without the burden of producing.

Sometimes we just need to give ourselves permission.

Permission to break. Permission to cry and scream. Permission not to hold it all together. Permission to simply let the house be messy or let dinner be cereal. Permission to let go when you’ve been holding on so tightly. Permission to see hope in a different outcome than what you’ve been fighting for. Permission to be content in an unwanted situation when it feels unnatural. Permission to not put up the strong front that is expected. Permission to simply sit in the ashes and grieve. Permission to rise again.

Whatever it might be.

And I think the Bible supports this idea.

There is a time for everything.

A time to plant. A time to harvest. Between those two things is a time of waiting. Sometimes a long time of waiting.

A time to break down and a time to build up.  Between those two things is a time of reckoning and counting the cost.

A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to weep and a time to laugh. Times to embrace the extremes of life, those natural ups and downs, and be okay with them.

A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. These are times of pulling people close and times where there are boundaries put firmly in place.

A time to seek and a time to lose.  Times when we pursue a thing and times when we are called to give it up.

A time to keep and a time to cast away. Seasons in life of holding on and seasons where we let go.

A time to tear and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.

Sometimes our culture idolizes what’s considered “strengths”: building up, embracing, seeking, laughing, dancing, love.

But then somehow minimizes the wisdom, practicality and even necessity of those things often labeled negative: tearing down, mourning, refraining, losing, casting away, hate.

But sometimes the greatest thing you can do is give yourself permission to do what you don’t want to do, but what you need to do. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can give yourself is permission to break down, cry, cast away, tear, keep silent. Even … lose.

What do you need to give yourself permission for today?