I wrote a post a few months ago focusing on the idea of making amends. “Making amends” is about reconciling, addressing the rift or, sometimes, the chasm that has been dug out through mistrust, mistreatment, and misunderstanding.

It occurred to me, at some point, that amends isn’t something we just need to make with other people. In fact, for many of us (for most of us) we need to start with ourselves. We can smooth over the rough places in all kinds of relationships, but the hardest—perhaps—is changing how we think about and treat ourselves. And the way we think about and treat ourselves is the foundation from which we connect with others. So, I believe, we cannot experience vulnerability and intimacy with others if we are unwilling to take a hard look at our relationship with ourselves.

Essentially, can we begin to accept what it means to be human: strong AND weak, afraid AND brave, lost AND found, whole AND broken?

Can we agree that we are courageous enough to change AND that we cannot change ourselves?

Can we call on Christ when we are stuck, swirling in our own mania, zinging in the darkness?

Can we see—for the first or the hundredth or the thousandth time—that we are not capable of willing ourselves or wooing ourselves out of our own lostness?

In very small, unimpressive ways, can we whisper heart-words to Christ? Can we squeeze out the smallest prayers? Can we turn in his direction?

Can we believe that we are worthy of his love, his touch? Can we face the fact that we cannot fix ourselves—no matter what new strategy, new discipline, or new best-seller we are following?

Can we let him in?

We care for ourselves, make amends with ourselves, repair our relationship with ourselves when we see that we are worth healing AND that we need Christ in order to be free.