I have been thinking a lot about judgmentalness. I have recently began to realize how harsh I can be with myself. As I am aging, my abilities have changed and I find my limitations have shifted. I move more slowly. On the days my joints ache, I move even more slowly. I flail at finding words on the tip of my tongue. I was judging the changes and feeling impatient with myself. I realized I was doing the same thing that I did to my mother when she began aging and changing. Such a sobering thing to realize.
I began thinking about last week’s blog entry about curiosity, openness and questioning. Judgmentalness clogs our hearts and minds making curiosity, openness and even questioning difficult. The anecdote to judgmentalness seems to be willingness and humility. Humility enables acceptance and surrender. These choices afford us freedom to think more clearly and grow in creativity because our brains have more space and energy. In this process, our sense of self and identity seems to grow, too. Sounds so much better than badgering myself “to change and grow.” Yeah, badgering never works…
I have a couple of quotes for you from the Big Red Book for Adult Children of Alcoholics. “Our humility leads us to creativity and exploration. We have more energy because we are focusing on ourselves instead of others (p.222)…Humility comes from God…with humility we find our will aligns with God’s will on a more frequent basis. True humility is the willingness to seek and do God’s will with our best effort (p.223).”
So, I will endeavor to be gentle in my focus on myself and I ask that you be gentle with yourself, too. We are the objects of God’s affection! His/Her/Their affection is focused towards you. As you can receive it and be gentle with yourself and each other, creativity becomes a reminder to us that we are image bearers of the Original Creator. Dear ones, allow humility to take that over-packed weight of judgment off your back and embrace humility as often as you need it. (I, myself, have to embrace it many times each day.)
With humility that does not humiliate,
—Dianne