In a conversation with a friend the other day, my heart was breaking over how distraught he’d become over something he’d done and wasn’t proud of.
The deed was a small thing really, in the big scheme of things. Not a moment in life to be proud of, but neither a moment of darkness and desperation. Just a lapse in judgement, a small slight, a minor blemish. The sort of thing we’ve all got hanging around the dusty crevices of the paths we’ve taken through life.
But my friend held this “sin†up in the bright light in front of the eye of his mind’s judgement on himself, and couldn’t seem to let it go. He was letting it define him, and shape the “goodness†or “badness†of how he viewed his place in the world.
He could see clearly the arrogance that he was displaying in trying to hold himself up to the unreasonable standard of “perfectionâ€. He knew – objectively and logically – that he needed to let go of this poison of self-loathing that was seeping into his soul. Yet he struggled to do this letting go.
We stumble through life, tripping over our own feet most of the way. It’s amazing we don’t make more mistakes, blunders, and gaffes than we do. Nearly always, a simple acknowledgement of the gaffe, perhaps a request for forgiveness when appropriate, is all it takes to wash it from our life.
But we rarely let that cleansing occur, and choose instead to wrestle with the tiny error. As we wrestle with the tiny little thing, it feeds on our self and our soul, becoming larger with every bite we hand it. feeding our self and our soul to the error in the process.
The deed itself is a tiny little thing, usually forgotten by all but our own ego. The wound it leaves behind, though, becomes a festering factory of self-loathing and poison. The poison seeps through us, speaking endlessly to us of our worthlessness, proving with itself the depths of our depravity.
A splinter buries itself in our finger. If we pull it out right away, there’s hardly a discomfort to notice. Leaving it to fester, however, can create a painful ordeal when we finally choose to pull the offending splinter out.
I don’t know if my friend has cleansed his wound yet or not, though I know he let it fester long enough that it’ll be a painful process. His experience was a reminder to me to look carefully for the splinters I pick up as I trip my way through life, stumbling over my own feet, trying hard to stay out of the mud. It’s rarely our “sins†that are the issue we need to be concerned about, but the poison we allow them to leave behind in us.
Pull the splinters fast, wash the wounds right away, and most of all, revel in the hilarity of the stupid things we do every day!
You’re so right, Neil. We have to learn to let things go instead of letting them fester. There are such valuable words of wisdom in this post.
You’re so right, Neil. We have to learn to let things go instead of letting them fester. There are such valuable words of wisdom in this post.