Loved As We Are, Not As We Should Be

We can take our disappointments, failures, and mistakes too seriously. We do this when we decide to hold onto them or do nothing about them. More seriously, we can take our mistakes to be an essential description of our person. Thus we label ourselves as a failure, a victim, or a wrongdoer. In making these moves, we not only lock ourselves into certain descriptions, but we produce self-fulfilling prophecies. We become what we think we are. The short circuit to this spiral is not to try valiantly to avoid making mistakes. Perfectionism is not the answer to despair. Instead, we need to learn to come with our disappointments, failures, and mistakes to a place of acknowledgment and unburdening. Nouwen gently reminds us that “God does not require a pure heart before embracing us.” We are loved with our disappointments and failures. We are invited in spite of our wrongdoing. We can come home even though we have wandered. We can start again even though things have gone all wrong. We do not need to stay where we are. The secret of the spiritual life is not to achieve a state of bliss while having become blind to our mistakes. Instead, the secret is to recognize that the Great Lover welcomes us as we are—not to pity us, but to gently transform us and inspire us with new hope.”

—Charles Ringma, Dare to Journey with Henri Nouwen