As 2017 draws to a close, I can’t recall another year of my life packed with so much growth from start to finish. That growth, as so often is the case, was unfortunately sparked by my own mistakes.
It seems eons ago that the clock struck midnight and I stood under New York City fireworks for the first few seconds of New Year’s morning, surrounded by high quality people that I knew (and strangers unlike myself daring enough to enter a midnight race in the freezing cold). As we crossed the threshold into 2017, I was painfully ignorant of what would soon come to pass.
My New Year’s Resolutions, though I didn’t call them that, would come to be shaped in part by the people I lost not long after the year turned. When you drive away someone you truly care about, it’s hard not to take a long look inside and figure out what you have to do in order to get right.
So it was that I “resolved” to get to the base of where I went wrong. It wasn't far along the journey that God helped me realize I needed to get real with myself and find congruency – in other words, decide what my values were and learn to be open about my shortcomings. It’s been a process, and not one with which I can say I'm finished, but I’ve made progress, and that's a blessing.
There was time spent stuck in both regret and sorrow. Where in the past I often projected strength, for much of the first part of this year I was unable to do so. Where in the past I was quick to (externally) get up and quickly move forward, I learned (perhaps accidentally) that sometimes we need to really allow ourselves to feel for awhile – to process, in a healthy way, what is going on in our lives and how things will look different in the future.
I already knew that my shortcomings were destructive, but I finally took a stark look at them and started to accept the forgiveness God offers, along with the help of others willing to share the unconditional love they had already received from God.
I learned a lot about loss, and I learned a lot about wishing. I learned that no amount of longing could change the past, and I realized that whatever success and skills I have, there’s no guarantee I can arrange the future the way I want it to be.
I found out how hard times can lead to big lessons. That doesn’t mean that I am grateful for what happened; I could have learned those lessons in a variety of other ways that didn’t involve hurting someone I love. It happened, though, and I saw no other option but to finally, really figure out what it means to truly stumble and get back up.
I figured out a lot about letting go, something I’ve never been good at. For one reason or another, chapters close and storylines end. I lived a lot of this year with one foot in the past, and I don’t blame myself for that - it's okay to take time to feel pain. For too long, though, I bought into the lie that my mistakes defined me.
No. God defines me. Not because of any feat of my own, but rather by the blood of Jesus, he calls me clean. The opinions of others, all my imperfections and insecurities, they are all covered by the mystery of grace.
I grew up hearing, and misinterpreting, quotes about failure. When people argued failure can beget success, I would contend that it doesn't have to. Jesus, who lived a blameless life, is the prime example that good can come without the bad.
But now I see what I failed to for much of my life as I tried to be perfect: Jesus didn't die for perfect people. The truth is not that we need failure in order to learn – it’s that we are going to fail, and it's ours to decide whether we will learn and more importantly, whether or not we will accept God's grace.
2017 has been a rough year, one where I grew at a cost – the cost of a mistake that pushed away a person I cared about, a mistake that I didn’t have to make. But 2017 showed me that God doesn’t abandon us in this life even when we abandon Him. Even when I'm weak, when I fail, when I make mistakes as humans do, He still loves me.
It's a great mystery to me, and it's one that I'm learning to love.