|
Leave Your Mess-Ups Behind You
|
|
By Dianna Hobbs
I'm not a Twitter person, but I do love Facebook.
If you follow me there, you
know that every day I share whatever it is God places upon my heart. Last
evening, I posted a thought He gave me in the middle of getting ready to pack
it in for the evening.
I wrote, "Don't waste
another minute regretting past mistakes or failures. Just begin again. There
is a new mercy waiting for you. Start fresh."
Truth is, everyone-at least
those who are not in denial-have things in their history they wish they would
have done differently. I do. You do. We all do.
In fact, my mind goes back to
January 1998 when my husband Kenya and I were first married. We were young,
wide-eyed and fresh out of our parents' houses. We felt like we
could conquer the world together as long as we had each other.
I remember so vividly that
cold winter day when we both walked into our little apartment for
the first time as a married couple.
We were plenty giddy and
excited.
After our pseudo-honeymoon,
which was actually just a 2-day stay in a local hotel-all our meager budget
and his work demands would allow-we were anxious to begin a new chapter in
our lives.
If that chapter had had a
title, it would have been, "Learning
Hard Lessons About Being Grown, Married and Responsible for Making It On Your
Own."
We had no idea how clueless
we really were, even if blissfully so.
When I close my eyes, I can
still see and hear the creaky, uneven, burgundy tiled floors in that
tiny kitchen.
I can picture the beige
narrow bathroom with hardly any walking room. I still see
the off-white vertical blinds, covering the sliding glass doors in the
living room, leading to the small third floor patio overlooking the parking
lot.
We were extremely
proud of our 2-bedroom haven. From the level of excitement we expressed, you
would have thought we were moving into a mansion. But the size of our place
did not matter. It felt like a sprawling estate.
It was ours.
And with it, came responsibilities
and plenty of expenses we were not ready to handle.
Having never been on our own
before, we did not have the requisite knowledge to make sound financial
decisions, which negatively impacted our stability.
We struggled many days. It
was rough.
Our money was funny and our
green was real lean.
It took us a good while to
get the hang of things and learn to balance the budget. But with time and
mistakes under our belt, eventually, we figured out valuable lessons from the
school of hard knocks.
Looking retrospectively
through eyes of wisdom and understanding, there are so many things we should
have done to avoid those hardships. If we could have a do-over, trust, we
would.
But we can't.
Neither can you.
Hey. When you don't know
better, you just can't do better.
Since there is no way to turn
back the clock and get that do-over, it is better to move forward and thank
God you know now what you did not know then.
After all, lamenting past
failures, beating yourself up over "stupid" choices and kicking
yourself for what might have been if you had been different, is unwise.There
is nothing you can do to reverse any of it.
 |
