Sweet Monday Morning Goodness

I read this words in bed yesterday morning, in my Christmas pajama pants (yes, I’m still wearing them). And I lifted my face up to the blank white ceiling and half prayed/ half sighed “Yes, Yes, Yes.” Oh, these words, friends. I pray they are just what you need to hear today as well…

“If I am appreciated for what I do, what I achieve, I am not in fact unique since someone else can do the same, and probably do it better than I. When my estimation and value of myself depends on what I can produce with my hands or with my mind, then in Henri Nouwen’s words I have allowed myself to be ‘a victim of the fear tactics of the world’. This is the self that so often leads me into activity to prove my value. But if productivity becomes my main way of overcoming self-doubt I lay myself open to rejection and criticism, and so to inner anxiety or depression. I am constantly checking myself and my achievements. So my productivity really only reveals how much I am driven by fear of not being up to standard and by an insatiable desire to justify myself. It is only when I am loved not for I do but for who I am that I can become myself, unique and irreplaceable.”

-Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction: An Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality