There's an old cliche: put your money where your mouth is. We can all talk, and talk is cheap (there's another, for you). The value of what we say is exemplified in a few phrases, which came from where I'm sure there are many more. The things we stand for will be challenged, and there will be times when we lose our focus. It is completely human and it happens to everyone. The key is what we do when we realize we've gone off track.
The last time she saw me, a cousin of mine who reads much of my writing said, "You're always trying to define yourself." She said it like it was a bad thing, but it's something that, in being hyper-self-aware, I know and am on good terms with. I am someone who likes to know myself, which is a challenge as we are ever-changing beings. So I am constantly trying to define myself. I would almost go so far as to say I fear finding myself at a place where I do not know myself well. It's not necessarily that I pride myself on it, but that I think it's important.
For as much as I aim to know myself and be self-aware, I too am prone to the occasional one step back. I did that recently. As I've talked about before, I went through a partying stage after returning from YWAM (of all things). I call it a stage because there aren't many stupid things I've done that I really care about, but this - this was a stretch of being really stupid. Basically I drank a lot. Thankfully (believe me) I survived said stage relatively unscathed, save for the fact that you can't un-have experiences. I'd realized after a patchy night of celebrating a party-friend's birthday, it wasn't even close to smart and definitely not worthwhile. Ever since, I haven't disappointed myself.
Finally this fall, in spite of out of character isolation in reaction to stress, I felt like I was moving forward, almost exponentially. I was re-entering a heart-understanding of where God has me and what He wants me to do. This amid heights of anxiety and...then I cut loose, a little too hard. Nothing detrimental further than disappointing myself in a way I've been very done with. I don't often wear guilt, but I never want my talk to be cheap; I mean to mean what I say. So I brought it to God, this isn't who I am anymore, how did I do it again? He kindly reminded me of something that He had kindly told me several years ago when I was similarly at a loss on account of my weakness:
You can fail a thousand times, and still...
It wasn't to say there's a limit, but the opposite! That my imperfection isn't a hindrance to His grace; there is no hindrance to His grace.
So I have been lounging in something; not quite guilt, but...a tension. There is this tension of recognizing my imperfection but moving away from it to the best of my ability. There's no promise I won't fail again; that I won't eat my words and swallow my convictions, but because of Grace I can aspire to move forward.
Many people have a misconception about the biblical meaning of "repent". It doesn't just mean to feel sorry, but to turn around and go in the other direction. It's so tricky that Grace allows us to turn around and change that which we would not otherwise have the opportunity, let alone the will to change.
