Screwed Up Again

Just the other day I did something stupid.  I handled a situation in a way I thought would be good, but I just made the situation worse.  That screw up nagged my mind for nearly two days.  It’s so frustrating when we find ourselves in these situations isn’t it?  It’s like suddenly we realize just how “not together” we really are.

This, I think, is an important mentality to embrace as we try to figure out how to live a life differently because we love our Father.  We need to realize that we are easily swayed, easily led to poor decisions.  I’m not saying we should just throw up our hands and say, wo is me, a sinner…I might as well keep on sinning.  No, it’s about an attitude of humility. 

It’s a tough attitude to have at any age.  The challenge as a teen is that you’re at a stage in life where your independence is growing.  You are on the move toward individual adulthood (it’s not as far away as it seems!).  So, there is a tendency to fight for others to take you seriously.  You want people to know you’ve grown up and they can trust you.  It’s really hard when people still treat you like a kid. 

Those are all valid feelings, but let’s move toward not losing sight of reality, a reality that all people regardless of age need to see: we fall easily.  For me, it leads me this way: when that situation happened that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was angry.  Angry at the circumstances, but mostly angry at myself.  I took my anger to my Father.  I did some internal yelling (and some out loud ones in my car! J).  All in all, though, I was led back to the gracious arms of my Heavenly Dad. 

I had to go do some apologizing to someone, but I also learned not to beat myself up.  But, also, it reminded me how much I need the Holy Spirit.  As we address some issues in our lives, like the issues of sexuality, we need this humility.  It’s not easy.  We all have areas that we’re going to fail in. 

The encouragement, though, is that our Father, our Friend, walks with us.  Jesus said He doesn’t call us slaves, but friends.