messing up

I have always worried about disappointing others, but thankfully I have not feared disappointing God.  I desire to give the Lord my best and to be wise and apt in my navigation of life. 

I would love to always say the thing that helps another person in his or her specific situation.  I want to be forthright and honest, but still choose my words and the timing of them so that they do good and not harm.  I accept that this will not always happen.  Sometimes it will be my fault…I will speak in a way that offends.  Sometimes the right words will hit a wall of disconnect because the other person simply cannot hear them across the divide of our individual personalities.  But I have a God who redeems even my worst mistakes.  Thanks be to Jesus for dying to make all things new. 

In my childhood my reaction to making mistakes was to lie and cover up.  I had a deep fear of being less than perfect.  Thankfully, meeting Jesus helped me understand that being loved did not depend on my perfection. 

There is a time and a place for selective truth telling.  No woman wants to hear that she looks fat in that dress.  But if I am in a dressing room with my daughter and she tries on something that I don’t love on her, I think she is relying on me to find a gentle way to say so.  (Especially since she knows that I almost always think she looks darling in everything!)

However, shading the truth shouldn’t happen just because it is easier.  The easy way is hardly ever the best way in the long term.  Jesus said, “Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life.”  He is that gate, that road.  But it is narrow, not because he is exclusive, because it isn’t easy.  It asks of us a constant course correction, step by step, right foot, left foot on the path with Jesus.  

I do not fear messing up.  But I still wish to live a blameless life as Psalm 15 describes it:  speaking the truth from my heart, doing my neighbor no wrong, keeping promises, even if it hurts.  And WHEN I fail in this, I run back to that Blameless Man who died a long time ago to set me free from the bondage to my failures.

Love, Liz

“God knew we would mess things up, and yet, that didn’t stop him from moving forward…God had a plan for our mistakes.”                 Meredith Barnes, Every Day Holy