Learning with Grace

There is this interesting space that I find myself in sometimes, and it has to do with writing. I look at it like “work”; I toil sometimes with it. I fail just to engage. To come before a blank document and ask God, “What do You want me to talk about?” Even in that, Harvested Moments is growing, but it doesn’t grow if I don’t engage, only engage when I feel like I have something to say, or only engage when I feel like it. This is a space of honesty, and honestly, that works in my favor because there is no framework here for me other than being honest. This space was about transparency, and still is. So whatever is real is what fits here, regardless of how I feel about what things should look like or be like. I have no idea what this space will be, as I said, it’s growing. And as it grows, given I have no idea of how or what it’s going to grow into, I have to be completely open to learning about what I am doing and learning about myself. So that means I can’t have these expectations of what I think it’s supposed to be and then measuring what I’m doing against my incomplete picture, because I’m learning. Right now, my view of Harvested Moments is incomplete. And all I have now is the fact that God told me to start writing.

I wrote something down in my journal that spoke to how I feel about learning. I said, “Learning feels like a challenge, it’s like a pressing, it feels like being uncomfortable; having to be okay knowing that I don’t know.” And as I was writing this, I found peace and the answer that my heart was looking for. “Knowing you don’t know actually takes the pressure and/or pressing off of you. It’s grace with yourself”, is what I wrote after that.

I realized that learning is only uncomfortable when I feel like I should know more. But, if I understand that needing to learn only means I don’t know things now, then I can have grace with myself, because… how could I know something I never learned before? How can I judge myself as if I’m supposed to know, when this is my first time living? I haven’t had a life before this. I’m learning as I go, so how can I be hard on myself when I’m learning? The answer is: I shouldn’t be.

All of the “I should know better”… how? Ask yourself, “How should I know better when I haven’t learned better?” How can you do better if you haven’t learned, and why be afraid of learning when you KNOW you don’t know? Why be afraid of learning if that’s the only way to actually be better? Because what if you’re not good at it? What if you fail? What if it’s hard?… Well, that’s what learning is for. It trains you, it gives you endurance and perseverance. It’s strengthening you. It equips you. And when it gets hard, remembering that you don’t know and that you are learning is crucial, because in that mindset and heart position, you can have grace with yourself to continue on learning.

I don’t know, nor am I aware of what Harvested Moments will become. But I will never know if I don’t engage due to fear of failing or because I have to learn. Engaging is the only way I see more and come into a real understanding of what God wants me to do; it’s the only way I learn. And forget these rules and fake guidelines and an image of what I want to display; this thing is actively growing and changing. I just said that I didn’t know what this will be. The best thing I can do is throw myself at it entirely, authentically, withholding nothing, and just learn. Just grow, just move, and just engage.