Mind racing, thinking what I’d do next, some quick unkind words escaped my lips as I realized what I’d done. Just as quickly though, my inner self reminded me to STOP and to be kind, to forgive, to give grace. I sighed a big sigh and then released myself from the guilty voices wanting to beat me up. I chose to forgive myself right then and there, out loud. Deep breaths, yes, deep breaths! My inner critic didn’t want to, oh no, because y’all, it was used to yelling at (on the inside) and beating myself up over things such as this. As soon as I shut up the mean inner critic, chose to forgive myself, to let it go, to\u2026 wait for it, EXTEND grace to myself, a heavy yoke fell off my shoulders. It was so freeing in that moment to see what extending grace and forgiveness to yourself will do, for you, for your family.
You see, about a year ago, I embarked on this journey of learning that grace and kindness, forgiveness and deliberately choosing life would heal my heart. The process has been incredibly freeing, sometimes scary, yet so worth it. I’m seeing where it gets easier and easier the more I practice these truths and I know it’s becoming a part of who I am.

What is the moral of this story? When you change how you think and speak to yourself, you will be liberated! Be kind to yourself! Speak kindly to your heart! Forgive yourself quickly so shame and guilt have no foothold. That’s not who you are! Learn to extend grace for you! It’s there for you, God has already given it to you! Be encouraged, dear heart!

**Full disclaimer: the cookies were saved, thank God! Also, the rack has yet to be cleaned. That’s next on my MAP! Yep, that’s mom life!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was one of those days. I was extra tired with a lot on my mind and heart. I was dealing with attitudes and training young ones. If you’re a parent of young ones in training you will know what I mean when I say my brain juice was pretty much used up. So, brain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,55,25,46,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-grace","category-motherhood","category-truth","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/grace.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yowO-3sp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13293"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13325,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions\/13325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeamplified.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}