After binge-watching "Friday Night Lights" on Netflix, I soon fell in love with every part of the show. While the many characters demonstrate life experience I may never know, there is something great to take from this show, and while we may think we know a person, we do not truly know the burdens they carry.
In addition, a major takeaway from that is that while we make mistakes, they do not define us. Our mistakes in life are teaching moments that are important to us growing as a person. Without our mistakes, we learn nothing new.
Everything in life is situational, and while we can try our best to validate our mistakes there is no excuse. However, “God created sin so that we might know his mercy.” From personal experience, I know I have made many mistakes in this lifetime, and I know there are many mistakes to come in my future.
I spent my first year of college attending the University of Alabama, and while at first I couldn’t picture myself anywhere else, time proved it was not the right fit for me. While I was there, I made my fair share of mistakes. I drank too much, I went out too much and I wore clothes I wouldn’t want my grandmother to see me in. Most importantly, I hurt people I cared about the most and made a fool of myself.
I blamed my actions on the college experience, and I think that might have been the worse excuse is could have ever mustered together. And although others used this excuse as well, and my parents tried to validate my actions to me by saying they have been there too, I realized there was nothing that could make me feel better about my choices.
Time might heal all wounds but it cannot undo your past. All I can do now is learn from my mistakes and hope to be a better person because of them. I pray to God that the people in my life will see that my flaws do not define me — they are only proof that I am human.
And when the shoe is on the other foot, I learn to forgive like a child. Though it is no excuse, I do not always know the burdens the people in my life carry. But if there is anything I have learned its that “there is no weakness in forgiveness.”
