Dear Dad,
I thought I might take a little time this morning to respond to one of your Lenten messages. They are VERY good this year. You must have been doing some serious soul searching.One of the comments you made in today’s meditation reminded me of a little blurb heard on NPR yesterday. You wrote, One of the things that Lent encourages us to do is to take a good hard look at ourselves. When we do, we realize that we could always be gentler in our ways, in our reactions with others. Most often though we are too harsh and hard hearted with ourselves.
I was driving into work yesterday after what has been a pretty tough couple of weeks at work. We have been busy, very busy, at work and things have been frenetic. Jeremy was out of town so I had spent the night at a friend’s house so I wouldn’t get scared. I was quietly chastising myself for being such a wimp about staying home alone. I was anticipating the day ahead, trying to steel myself for a day of edits and well meaning, but pervasive, criticism of my work. I was, as is typical, recollecting that I had not been to the gym in too long and had actually put shoestring onion rings on my sandwich the night before – so bad for me (but delicious!)! I was regretting having already cheated, a few times, on my Lenten promise to not eat sweets. I only live 8 minutes from my office …. it is amazing the amount of self-loathing I can squeeze into such a brief commute.
Then, on NPR, one of the cool voices stated that yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, the beloved show of my childhood. An interviewee came on the air and said, “I am a successful man in my 40s and it still feels so good to hear Mr. Rogers’s kind voice reassure me that ‘He likes me just as I am.’ ” And then the radio played a real clip of Mr. Rogers (who was no doubt tying or untying his shoes) saying, “I like you… just as you are.”
He says it slowly and with such simple intonation as to make me actually believe it. And it brought me to tears.Hearing those words of my childhood reminded me of something so simple and basic to the Christian life that it is the first thing I seem to forget. That God Loves Me … just as I am. As a child that message washed over me, from Mr. Rogers to songs as simple as “Jesus Loves Me.”
Hearing my parents say they loved me as a child I often thought, “yeah, duh.” Because I was a child, I was imbued with a since of being loved that permitted me to take that message for granted. And it seems to me that every year of my life I regress further and further away from that childlike state.Someone once said to me, “Treat yourself as you would someone you love without any judgment, like a child.” This is exactly what Mr. Rogers did and exactly why he was so wonderful to hear. This doesn’t mean we get to do or have whatever we want, but maybe just be a little more compassionate and understanding with ourselves. Don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to a child. “Caroline, you may never ever get a two page motion right” – is what I say. But maybe what I should say, is what I would say to a child, “I know it is frustrating, but think how much you are learning. You will get it right sometime, I promise.”
It sounds corny, I admit it, but Mr. Rogers was corny, and it turns out we may still need to hear the things he said to us and the way he said them.Lent is a confusing time. We are supposed to become closer to God by sacrificing, by giving something up or taking something on, and yet that act alone, for many of us, promotes the very guilt and self-criticism that I don’t think is consistent with the message that God Loves Us, just as we are.
Notably, when I told Jeremy last night my thoughts about Mr. Rogers and God described above, he responded, “Does this mean we can eat sweets again?” I said “no,” but I remain unconvinced that God really cares whether or not I eat sweets. And I am not all together sure that he would not see my “sacrifice” as anything other than an absurd way to blame him for more self-criticism. Maybe the way to be closer to God this Lenten season is to become more like him – not just by being better to others – but by being better to ourselves. By, as you said, softening our hearts. Remembering that if God lives inside our hearts – how miserable it must be for him to hear us be so hard on ourselves! Let’s try loving ourselves today as God does, just as we are, and just as he did when we were children. I think we believed it then and we were better for it!
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