Navigating Life's Screw Ups by Letting Grace In
A few weeks ago my husband and I took the kids on a family outing to the Reptile Zoo in Ann Arbor. After parking the car in a fairly spacious parking lot, we sat there for a few minutes talking and eating. Suddenly, we heard a BAM and jerked forward. Thankfully, we were all still buckled in. Some guy backed into us with his fancy mustang denting our back door. We were annoyed and confused as to how he managed to back into us in such a large and unattended parking lot. We tried to be nice since obviously the guy was very embarrassed. After a repeated apology, I told him not to worry about it because it's just life and this stuff happens.
It's easy to get prideful in situations we don't understand how someone could possibly screw up. It's easy to think we know better or we would have done something differently. The truth is... we are human in desperate need of grace from one another.
Yesterday, I saw great strides in my marriage all because we made a series of stupid mistakes.
It began in the morning when I saw a rag absolutely soaked in coffee and coffee stains covering the counter top. My husband confessed he tried to make coffee forgetting to put a cup under the coffee maker resulting in coffee all over the counter instead of in the cup. Then when I went to take a load of laundry out of the dryer I realized the clothes were still wet since I forgot to start the dryer. This is the same load of laundry I already washed twice because it never made it to the dryer yet! When afternoon hit I got my medicine out of the fridge meaning to inject it, but accidentally left it out for a few hours so now it's unusable, and these injections are NOT cheap! Oops. In the evening, my neighbor let my husband know that our car lights were on. Soon after that my husband called and asked if I could pick him up because he was on the wrong bus. Of course as I tried to start the car it was dead. Thankfully, later that evening my husband jumped my car and got it working again. However, a few hours later he realized the car was STILL running and just about ran out of gas. SO MANY FAILS IN ONE DAY!!!!!! And we have a bigger list of fails just in the past few months. Just ask us about the time we lost a $100 check, threw away $100 bill, bought a new lap top and sent it to the wrong address, and accidentally paid a giant hospital bill we could not afford by pressing the wrong button online. WE ARE A MESS!
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Thanks to these fails, while in bed reviewing our day, we couldn't stop cracking up at all the dumb things we did. Learning to laugh at our mistakes has brought a lot of joy and less stress in our marriage. We are still learning how to do this, and we don't always do it very well. It's easy in times of stress to blame each other or beat yourself up over dumb mistakes. But it's never worth it.
After Mr. Mustang hit our car, I was wondering why I wasn't more upset about the situation. I realized this is because I have such a history of doing dumb things that I have learned to accept God's grace for myself. Accepting that grace while realizing my own humanity, has allowed me to extend God's grace to others easier. I still have learning to do in this area! However, thanks to God's help much progress has been made!
What area of your life do you need to let God's grace in?
It's easy to get prideful in situations we don't understand how someone could possibly screw up. It's easy to think we know better or we would have done something differently. The truth is... we are human in desperate need of grace from one another.
Yesterday, I saw great strides in my marriage all because we made a series of stupid mistakes.
It began in the morning when I saw a rag absolutely soaked in coffee and coffee stains covering the counter top. My husband confessed he tried to make coffee forgetting to put a cup under the coffee maker resulting in coffee all over the counter instead of in the cup. Then when I went to take a load of laundry out of the dryer I realized the clothes were still wet since I forgot to start the dryer. This is the same load of laundry I already washed twice because it never made it to the dryer yet! When afternoon hit I got my medicine out of the fridge meaning to inject it, but accidentally left it out for a few hours so now it's unusable, and these injections are NOT cheap! Oops. In the evening, my neighbor let my husband know that our car lights were on. Soon after that my husband called and asked if I could pick him up because he was on the wrong bus. Of course as I tried to start the car it was dead. Thankfully, later that evening my husband jumped my car and got it working again. However, a few hours later he realized the car was STILL running and just about ran out of gas. SO MANY FAILS IN ONE DAY!!!!!! And we have a bigger list of fails just in the past few months. Just ask us about the time we lost a $100 check, threw away $100 bill, bought a new lap top and sent it to the wrong address, and accidentally paid a giant hospital bill we could not afford by pressing the wrong button online. WE ARE A MESS!
After Mr. Mustang hit our car, I was wondering why I wasn't more upset about the situation. I realized this is because I have such a history of doing dumb things that I have learned to accept God's grace for myself. Accepting that grace while realizing my own humanity, has allowed me to extend God's grace to others easier. I still have learning to do in this area! However, thanks to God's help much progress has been made!
What area of your life do you need to let God's grace in?
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