Forgiving Yourself

We are very good at calling ourselves names...the things that we have heard from others in the past, our past failures, and our general discontent with our own performance or place in life creates a negative self talk that is hard to bear AND that ultimately damages us in ways that God never intended. The old childhood adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me" doesn't stand up well in our real world experience.
Jesus was amazingly kind to the self-condemning. Though He could have given each person he met a perfect evaluation of their life, He rather chose to extend forgiveness to them. In fact, finding Himself in the midst of a circle of people ready to throw stones at a woman who many very well have deserved her punishment, Jesus did something different. He forgave. For many of us, we don't need others to pick up stones to throw at us--we do that pretty well on our own. We may even justify bad behavior on our own conclusion that we are not good people. But Jesus has different words to drive into our minds and souls.