one too many mistakes

I had made one too many mistakes in just one day last week, and my weariness was spilling over into tears. I was so tired of saying the wrong things, doing the wrong things, even thinking the wrong things - so tired of figuring out how to hold it all the right way and keep taking steps forward while also staying open-handed and loving those around me. Harder than you'd think, honestly. Certainly, it would be easier to take steps forward with a closed mind and variables no longer varied, or to love those around me with life all buttoned up nicely and a bow on top. That would be easier.

I had two choices:

1. Repent, and acknowledge my failure to others and to God, and to ask Him to forgive me and to show me the way forward. I could ask God to justify me - not to just tell me I'm ok or give me excuses, but to bring me back into relationship with Him and with others.

2. Or I could self-justify - try to explain and excuse away why I was right and others are wrong; why I'd said the things I said and done the things I'd done.

   
   

I am here to testify today that repentance was much faster, much easier, much less painful, and much more beautiful than the alternative would have been.

I would have had to give up sooner or later because I cannot justify myself. And so to have made that decision early on actually cut short the pain and sped up the healing process. Giving up was awfully humbling. Feeling the weight of the ways I have wronged others was miserable. Realizing that other people were performing better than me was a hit to my pride.

But my relationships literally began to repair overnight.

Prayer is so powerful. The fact that God sees our hearts is our greatest asset, in this case. When He knows we are sincere, and seeking, and submitted - He is so incredibly quick to deliver on His promises. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” I Peter 5:5

I write this here to remind me later and to remind you today - repentance is the only way forward.