Mistakes

Life can be rough and tumble at times. As a matter of fact, there are times when you can be left feeling as if you have been in the boxing ring with a heavyweight prize fighter simply trying to hold on long enough to make it to the end of the round without being counted out. Add to that, the sequence of challenging life events that can happen in such rapid succession; you don’t have enough time to catch your breath from one thing before being thrown once again into having to navigate your way through the torrential circumstances of the next thing.

When we find ourselves in the midst of rough times, it’s tempting to fall into believing that these things only happen to us. You know, “why is this always happening to me.” And if we are not careful, it’s easy enough to begin an invited guest list for our “poor me” pity party – snacks to be served.

The funny thing is, no matter how hard these rough and tumble life battles are, if we are blessed to make it through, still in one piece, despite being battle scared we are often so much wiser, having learned a multitude of lessons. And depending on how well we learn the lesson, we are not likely to make the same mistake again.

Mistakes are a part of being a human being. There is not one of us that is perfect, though there are many of us who claim to be a perfectionist. Claiming to be a perfectionist, will never mean we are perfect, we will always fail – why, simply because we are human. The blessing is to embrace our humanism, knowing that we are flawed beings aiming to do our best, based on the information we have, much of which we have learned through our mistakes.

We must be careful not to hold ourselves as prisoners of the mistakes we have made in our lives. Our Father forgives us and loves us and embraces us to heal us and set us back on solid ground, allowing us to pick up the pieces of our lives to once again live a life He gifted us with to enjoy. Why is it, that so often we don’t forgive ourselves and we deny ourselves the gift of joy and happiness that even our Lord and Savior said we were entitled to? It is certainly not a trap we should allow ourselves to fall into.

Check out Roman 5:3-5, to see what I mean; “More that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Let us now free ourselves from our mistakes, learn from them, become stronger because of them and live beyond them!

Tanya Wilson