When you sit down at a piano and play two conflicting notes together, the sound can be awful. Such a sound can stick out when a professional musician is performing a masterpiece. When we make a mistake in our lives and do something that is not in line with the song we are trying to write, it can hurt! But we aren't that single mistake and that moment doesn't have to define our life's melody we are writing.
I remember a mistake I made a few years back. I was making good decisions and doing really well at that time of my life, but the mistake looked like a glaring black mark on the story I was writing. A painful minor note in my D Major sonata. For months I was upset with myself for that one decision. I wasn't paying attention to the many good and right choices I was making, only staring at that one. It became all consuming as I dealt with the inner conflict of one bad choice I made.
A few months later a family member reached out and helped me to see that I was defining myself by that mistake. It wasn't who I was or even who I wanted to be, yet I was giving Satan power to make me feel that I was my mistake and that the song I was writing was forever tainted. That day forward I have been working to be intentional in my life. To daily define the woman that I am by the direction I am walking, not the slight detours I may temporarily take.
If you have played a wrong note in the melody of your life's song you are writing, I invite you to not let that mistake define you. Let the knowledge that you are a child of God define you. Let Jesus Christ literally take an eraser and make that wrong note disappear. One day when you can play the full melody of the life you have lived and person you have become, you will truly see your identity in the eyes of Jesus Christ. Pure and without error.
Challenge: Pray to God and seek to see clearly any mistakes you have made that you still haven't forgiven yourself for. How has it impacted you? Do you really believe Christ can erase that mistake? Discuss this with God and seek help from your bishop as needed.