Mistakes are inevitable. Life is a teacher. Mistakes are lessons that develop and change us.
My mistakes have covered a wide-range of choices and experiences from speeding on a residential street late at night because I was too tired to care (and, as a consequence, getting a ticket ) to making 30 apple pies in one day and working myself into a very horrible snap-at-everyone mood because I foolishly took on too much.
Other mistakes have been more costly. Trusting people, one of the key characteristics in my personality type, has very rich rewards as well as sorry consequences. Experiencing betrayal from what was a trusted relationship makes the heart pain and leaves one with the understanding that trust is strong like steel, unable to be easily broken, and it can also be as thin as ice in a post-Winter season. Once broken, it is almost never repairable.
A recurring mistake that has been part of my developing story is what Zachariah experienced when an angel told him that his wife, Elizabeth, who was aged and barren would give birth to a son. Zachariah, a priest, did not believe the message and as a consequence his capability to speak was taken away until the child, John, was born.
I too have battled faith and doubt when the circumstances in my life seemed, at the time, impossible for even God to answer and all I saw was a dark and miserable future. Or, when amazing opportunities came as open doors, yet I struggled with self-doubt and my perceived lack of ability to meet the responsibilities -- inwardly fighting to pull back, yet that divine call like a woman giving birth, was there pushing me to walk through the open door into something new and greater.
The consequences have been a long journey in releasing the draining emotional toll of belief and doubt, hope and fear, asking yet going into full-blown worry, and then finally in surrender reaching out with my two arms to my all-caring, all-giving Father and saying “Take it, I surrender again.”
I have learned about God’s redeeming grace in my lifetime. He has worked to provide answers, has never disappointed me and has remained consistently faithful. He had has His own way of showing me that I acted like a foolish child who put herself through an emotional wringer when it wasn’t necessary. He is in charge, in control and working. I continue to need to trust Him.
What mistakes have you learned from in your life?Your friend,
Margaret