CandaceMeiler.com

“Jesus & Spanx – Holding Candace together for over 20 years now.” – Me

My husband and I attended a local charity event this weekend. There was karaoke, musical bingo (singo,) and of course, we got to see many of our favorite people. I just love it when we get all dressed up to go to fundraisers like this. I usually buy a new dress. He wears a suit and coordinates his tie with my dress. You know, all the fun stuff guys like to do. It really was a fun night out!

Our schedules being as crazy as they are in this season of life, I opted out of the dress shopping hassle and settled for something I already had in my closet. I did, however, make a quick trip to the mall for something entirely more important—a new set of Spanx. Any woman who has worn them knows they can make you feel confident in almost anything you’re wearing. Sure, you can’t breathe, but by golly, your thighs and core are held so perfectly together that by the end of the night, you don’t know if the dizziness is from lack of oxygen or the cocktail you drank. But you look fantastic and that’s really all that matters, right?

Funny how a pair of Spanx can make a girl reflect on her life. (Seriously. The tag said, “Really trust your gut” and I can’t stop thinking about everything that could mean. It’s ok. I know I’m weird.) Well, the Spanx and the fact I always wax nostalgic when my birthday rolls around every spring. I just think birthdays should be special. Nothing extravagant, but it’s nice to be celebrated for a day. There have been times that I’ve dreaded my birthday, but I was much younger and didn’t know then what I know now. This year, the thought that won’t let me go is how far I’ve come, or better yet, who I’ve become. This week, it has been 22 years since I learned what it meant to give my heart to Christ—to get “saved” as many people call it.

Allow me to share a little backstory.

I was raised Catholic, and while I’m not saying anything negative about the Catholic faith, for me, I always struggled with going to confession. If God was big enough to create the entire world, why did I have to confess my deepest, darkest sins to the priest—a man? I mean, I wasn’t a terrible kid, but still. (That statement might be up for debate.) How do you make laundry list of all your sins? I’d stand in line with total anxiety, waiting my turn. Do I say this? Do I say that? I definitely have to tell him that one. Um…I think I’ll save that one for next time. And what was the right length of time to spend with the priest? Too long, and they might think I’d been really bad. Too short, and they would know I probably needed to stay longer. And was my mom going to question me in the car on the way home? It was super stressful, folks! I would go to confession and read off my mental list, then I would go home, kneel at my bed and have a long talk with God about the rest.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college and let me just say God can use anything, and I do mean anything, to wake you up and get your attention. I’ll summarize what he did for me because I could write an entire piece in itself about that period of my life. I was in my second year of college, making a lot of questionable choices, and through my own choices, of all the things that could have happened to me, I became pregnant. I was 19, single, ashamed, terrified…you name it. I felt broken and hopeless because I thought I had messed up so greatly, but God, even when I didn’t deserve it, used my daughter to turn my life around and teach me about unconditional love and forgiveness.  (By the way…She. Is. Awesome.) That’s when I learned what it meant to give my heart to Jesus. I discovered what it meant to truly be forgiven.

I recently posted a photograph of the love letters my husband has written to me every Valentine’s Day since 2014. When I was going through my box of stuff to find all the previous letters, I even found one he wrote me when we were in high school, right after I had broken up with him. It’s a tragic story (not really) that he loves to tell in a social setting. But the most important letter I found is what inspired me to write this tonight. It was a letter I wrote to myself, not long after my divorce was final. A time when I carried so much guilt and sadness. Some of what I said to myself is just too private to share, but I do want to share this:

“Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is the one who needs it the most—yourself. I need to forgive myself. Can it really be as easy as a choice? I mean, that’s how we decide to forgive others, right? We get so tired of hanging on to the bitterness, the turmoil, the hatred. We finally realize what’s done is done. It’s in the past and no matter how much we wish we could change it, that our life had taken a different course, we can’t, and it didn’t. So, it’s a choice. We choose to forgive only to find out we were the only one hurting from it anyway. ‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that prisoner was you.’

So, how does that work when the one you are angry with is staring back at you in the mirror? When you can’t seem to move on. Can’t seem to let go. But I’m realizing that I’m holding myself hostage. By refusing to forgive myself, I’m keeping myself from being happy. I am my own prisoner and I want to be free. I want to look at myself in the mirror and see a woman who is ok with herself. I want to be full of faith and optimistic. I want to be strong—like I know I am. I want to be the best mom to my kids. I want to use the gifts God gave me to do great things. I want to write again.

I can’t be any of this until I make a choice—a choice to forgive myself. So today I am making a choice. I forgive ME. I will not hold on to my guilt any longer. I choose to be strong and optimistic about my future. I choose to stop living life to please others. Plain and simple—I just choose to embrace life and live. I embrace my role as a mom, and I will be what my kids need. Every day is filled with choices. You must be able to live with the choices you make. What’s done is done. It is what it is. It’s time to forgive me. GOD FORGIVES ME – I FORGIVE ME!”

The pages were stained with tears when I wrote this letter to myself so long ago, but oh, how I needed to say all of this to myself! While things didn’t change overnight, and I do have things I still struggle with, it was definitely a turning point.

Reading it now, at this very moment in my life, my favorite line is “I want to look at myself in the mirror and see a woman who is ok with herself.” As my birthday approaches and I reflect on who I’ve become and how my life has changed in the last 22 years, I am proud of myself. I can look in the mirror and see a woman who is more than just ok with herself. I see a woman I love. I see that young 19-year-old who doesn’t know where she’d be if God hadn’t sent her a baby girl 22 years ago. I see a woman who has had success and failure, who has been bent and broken, but who can look herself in the eyes and smile with confidence. Confident because she knows, through all the storms that have tried to break her, Jesus has been there all along, holding her together. And He always will be.