Self-awareness is a pain

Do you know that feeling?

The one where you wake up in the middle of the night, knowing you forgot to do something.

The one where you leave your house and as your walking out the door, have the absolutely unquenchable feeling that you are forgetting something...that something just isn't right.

And then, at about 1:42pm, while you're sitting in Olive Garden with the friend you haven't gotten to catch up with in months, it hits you.  

Self-awareness sets in.  You get that knot in your stomach, put down the breadstick and the words that your friend is saying slowly fall into the distance as you figure out that the reason you have felt so oddly for months is now staring at you in your mind's eye, screaming for an explanation.  

It's amazing.  The more I try to learn to be more like Jesus, the more I see how far I am from being like Him.  Times like the self-awareness explosion are the most humbling experiences that I can think of to date.  They are the times when I realize that I have been judging people without intending to, which is even worse than judging people with the intention of judgement.  It means that this act of judgement is innate in me.  It is part of who I am.  There is no escaping it, without help of course...

Grace is a beautiful thing.  I don't always know that people will offer my grace when I wrong them.  But I know one place where I will always find grace and forgiveness.  And hopefully, grace is working in the person that I wronged, too, and rectification takes place.