I am normally pretty quick to forgive – both others and myself. After all, we’re all human.
The other day, however, I did something and beat myself up for it. Here’s what happened: where I live in Ottawa, when the weather gets near freezing and below, if our cars aren’t in a garage overnight, ice forms on the windshield as well as the rear and side windows, and we have to scrape it off. Usually we go to our car, turn it on and hit the defrost buttons (for the windshield and for the rear window) so they can start to defrost and then we scrape off the ice. But if we have enough time, we can just come out that much earlier, turn on the defrost buttons and sit in the car or even go back in the house, while the windows eventually defrost without our effort and without us freezing in the cold.
So this is what I did the other day. And I was sitting in the car feeling good that I had come out early enough to do the “no effort” method, when my son (whom I was driving to work) entered the car and turned on the windshield and rear defrost buttons. I hadn’t turned them on!!! I was sitting in a car whose windows were not at all defrosted even though they should have been by then.
So it had to be done manually – which isn’t the end of the world – but my mistake made us late! I have taught my kids to always show up for work at least five minutes early. And while I am chill about most things, time stress isn’t one of them (all my family members are nodding their heads vigorously at this).
So all the way to my son’s workplace I was stressed and beating myself up for that mistake. And driving faster than I should have.
What did that accomplish? Nothing. Nothing good, that’s for sure.
It didn’t undo my mistake, it didn’t get us there any more on time. I just wallowed in feeling bad about myself, which was a bad example to my son.
All I needed to do was apologize to my son because I caused his tardiness (actually he just got to work on time instead of five minutes early) and remember to turn on the defrost next time I plan to remove the ice the effortless way.
Sometimes there are consequences for our mistakes (my son could have been late for work) and we need to be super careful if safety or lives are involved – you don’t want a surgeon to say “Oops! I made a mistake” – but a lot of us beat ourselves up for mistakes that don’t carry dire consequences with them.
Let’s just apologize and move on. And if the consequences are more serious, then we deal with them the best we can and learn from it. Beating ourselves up us still doesn’t change anything or help in any way.
But there’s another level. I have just been talking (writing) about mistakes. My mistake wasn’t sin. But what about sin? What about the things we do that are more than mistakes, but disobedience to God’s ways?
Although those of us who love God want to obey Him and live according to His Word, we still do fail to do so; we still sin. The good news is that even for this, we don’t have to beat ourselves up. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He (God) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
And that, is good news!
