Sin and Failure

I have been wanting to write a post like this for a while. Here is a good opportunity.

I have been so sick with this dizziness and related problems this week that I have not been able to keep up with what needed to be done. It has been a really hard week.

The bills have been waiting to be paid since Monday. On Saturday night, I was finally able to sit down and start working on the first one.

Guess what happened?

My son spilled a 2 liter bottle of soda all over where the bills, important papers, checks to us, my kindle, my phone, were... covering the table, and spilling off onto the dining room floor!

As everything important from the last 2 1/2 weeks was swimming in a sticky mess of soda and what was going on was registering in my brain as I started in horror, I plucked out my phone and kindle. My mom snatched up half of the pile of bills. Then we both came back for more.

This is the type of mess that takes 2 or 3 hours to clean up properly, what with laying out each paper, mopping up the stickiness, and everything else!

And after trying all week to get to the bills... finally working on the FIRST ONE only to be set back like that... well, I knew I was probably not going to be up to accomplishing anything now.

Here is the part that I hate. I got angry. My son (he can rest in anonymity, since I have so many of them) said, "It exploded!" No, actually, he knocked the bottle over, straight onto my piles of bills and important papers. And when he said that, I thought he was being defensive. Afterwards, I wonder if he was just as shocked as the rest of us were.

I want people to realize I am a real person with the same struggles as everyone else. I write about how God is working and teaching me, and He uses times like this, where I fail miserably, to teach me too.

I didn't actually "yell", but I spoke very firmly, in anger, and more than once. I did it all over again a few minutes later out in the kitchen, thinking, "If I would just STOP I could straighten this out in my heart and walk honorably before the Lord," WHILE I CONTINUED TO DO IT!

That is the part I hate. I hate it because it hurt my son, and it hurt my Lord. It was a sin against both.

Then I had to start sorting the whole thing out. It was so wrapped up, for me, in the fact that I can't accomplish what I need to right now, that I think I'm still sorting it out. But I was wrong to get angry. It was an accident, and, actually, my children need my help to learn how to process their own dismay at situations like that. And I was not helping him.

I had tough work in apologizing to him, because he was convinced, at the point I started apologizing, that it was all his fault, and I SHOULD be that upset. I had to explain, then explain again with scripture, why it was wrong for me to be angry before he could understand.

"Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."
"If any man hate his brother without a cause, he shall be in danger of the council. If any man say to his brother 'Raca' (I suppose that was a bad name of some sort?) he shall be in danger of the council. But if any man say 'Thou fool' he shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bringest thy gift to the alter, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the alter, and go thy way. First go, and be reconciled to thy brother, then come and offer thy gift."

There were more, but I can't remember them now. Maybe if I remember them later I will come back and add him.

I had to share with my son what God was convicting my heart with. What a humbling thing!

That is pretty much the whole story. My mom and I talked about it on and off for quite a while, because it was a crazy thing. (And of course every bill from the last 2 1/2 weeks was stretched out all over the living room floor to remind us!) I have to live with the fact that I failed, before so many people...

But that does not bother me. The fact is, I am a person who fails, but I have a Savior who has paid for my sin, and that is where my hope lies. What a blessed thought! It is also what drives out every thought of covering my sin, or justifying myself to my family, as I could have done. We are living before our Savior, who loves us. Let us live in love to Him, even when we have failed.

The best thing is to go right back to Him after such failures. It is about HIM and HIS WORK, not "us" and our "failings". Praise His Name!!!