There was a time in my youth when I did stupid things on purpose. There’s a particular one, that maybe one day I will have the courage to write about, where I even said out loud “tonight, I’m going to make a mistake.” I have worked through a lot of the issues that caused me to crash out in such a grand way, and if you read enough of my entries, you’ll see the journey of healing I’ve been on. It has been arduous, tumultuous, and essentially really beautiful. It’s work that happens in the silence, in the darkness, and while I try my best to put it into words, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully describe the amazing love of God that has brought me to this point of healing.

For the most part, I’ve come to terms with a lot of my bad decisions. Most of them are now stories I tell either for the funny parts, or for the lessons I’ve gleaned from them. There are many realizations that come to the surface once you swallow your pride and you digest humble pie. But there are some bad choices I’ve made that sometimes peek back into my life, and I can’t help but feel like it’s a devilish prank or a targeted attack. Forgiving myself was the hardest part, and every time I feel like I’ve fully done that, it comes up again; these feelings and memories bubble up and it’s another struggle with the negative self-talk. Sometimes, these bad choices even move to BF Homes, near my village, and now I am scared that I will bump into said bad choices much more often. I thought it was going to be one of those things that was dead and buried, never again to see the light of day. Instead, it decided to make its home 400 meters away from where I sleep. I feel like someone’s playing a joke on me.

So in my prayer last night, I asked God, am I still being punished? Is there still a lesson to be learned? Do I have to keep on reliving the worst things I’ve ever done even after all these years? I was met with the soft plink-plank of the piano lullabies playing on my iPad and my daughter’s soft breathing. I felt like God was giving me that face that I give my kids when they’re looking for something that’s right in front of them. And so I prayed more, and talked with God more, and here is where I find myself: the proximity of my past fills me with fear because I am afraid I may find that I am the same girl that I was when I made those choices. But then I was reminded of the verse that has breathed life to my dry bones many times: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17 yelling at me, reminding me that i am no longer the same.

So I did a bad thing on purpose. I can blame it on a slew of unhealed things, but at the end of the day I made a conscious decision to hurt someone. What did I expect would happen? That the world would stop and adjust so that I don’t feel the discomfort of the reality of what I did?

Yes, actually that is what I thought would happen. That it was a chapter done and dusted, and I wouldn’t have to be reminded of it ever again.

Therein lies the lesson that still needed to be taken to heart: That forgiveness is continual work. It is not an overnight affair, or a short term solution. Choosing to forgive those who hurt us, and choosing to forgive ourselves for hurting others, is something we often have to choose daily. Thankfully, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;” (Lamentations 3:22-23) We have a source that never runs dry. We can draw the strength to choose forgiveness daily from a God who has a fresh batch of it every single day. We can stand as a new creation with every rising of the sun, no longer wearing yesterday’s skin.

As much as I would like to pretend that nothing ever happened, it did. But the beauty of living a life with Jesus is that we don’t have to be weighed down by it anymore. Not even if the burden is one of our own making. The proof of our mistakes might still be around us, but we don’t have to be defined by it, and we most definitely shouldn’t be limited by it. Sure, you might bump into it more often, but does that mean you’ll hole up at home and hide? Is that any way to live? Every time you are reminded that you once made a bad choice, we can opt to make a better one in the face of it: to choose to remember that we are forgiven, and that in Jesus there is now no more condemnation.