One high schooler in our youth group asked a question about coping with mistakes we make. I gather he was referring to poor moral choices, the kind of things we greatly regret having done.
I would first point out that there is perhaps no more important aspect of self-awareness than knowing we have made many serious mistakes in how we treat others and that we have no one to blame but ourselves. No one gets anywhere with God apart from such an acknowledgement. For that matter, the zenith of spiritual deadness and evil is the refusal to notice the damage we routinely do to others by our failure to act according to the value God places on them. If we could see just a fraction of how much God values every person around us, we would be utterly devastated almost beyond recovery to see how far we fall short of honoring that. So to at least acknowledge our mistakes is a good beginning.
A second important step is to be determined to learn all we can from every mistake. I pointed out to the group that successful athletes almost always highlight the fact they learned far more from their failures along the way than from their successes. Doesn’t that apply to all of us? If we are determined to grow in life, our stupidities stand to become our most effective teachers. So we do well to study them and ask, what can I learn from this?
I have read of more than one near death experience where the big question that came to them on the other side from the Being of light was simply, “What have you learned?”
So let me leave you with that question. Don’t waste your mistakes. Don’t wallow in regret or despair. Keep growing. Put them in the hands of Jesus and ask, Lord help me, what can I learn from this?
