You Can Move Forward: How To Heal After A Mistake

You can move forward: How to heal after a mistake

4 min ready by Chris Rea

He was 10. I was 8. And I remember it so clearly.

There I was watching my Dad try to pull a splinter out of my brother’s leg with tweezers. My brother, lying there on his stomach, tears in his eyes, trying to be strong.

How did my brother get that splinter you ask?

He got it because of me.

We were killing time before our Wednesday night Church youth group experience.

This is what you do when you get there super early because your Dad and Mom are youth pastors. And you know adolescent boys + extra time = inevitable minor disasters.

And that’s when it happened. While my parents were running around, praying, making sure all the Church details were set, my brother decided to climb on top of a 3-foot ledge in the church landscaping with very tall bushes hedging him in from behind, and that’s when a brilliant 8-year-old-boy idea popped into my head.

An idea that would later haunt my conscience for years to come:

push my brother off the ledge into the bushes

It seemed both exhilarating and hilarious to me. So, without thinking, I charged towards him with all my might and shoulder checked him off the ledge and into the bushes.

I immediately began laughing because FINALLY, the younger brother had conquered the older brother, but then, my laughing turned to horror when I heard my brother screaming out in pain and realized just as I saw my Dad racing towards us that I had pushed him into a thorn bush.

Of course, he had scrapes all over his body, but the kicker was a single thorn stuck deep into the back of his hamstring.

It begs the question, “Why did I do that?”

This was the question that burned in my mind for years to come. What in the world made me think that would be a good idea?

Have you ever had that same thought? Why did I make that wrong decision? What was I thinking? Maybe you escaped the poor choice without known consequence, but deep down it’s eating at your conscience, haunting you inside and creating fear and anxiety. Maybe you didn’t escape and you are dealing with the terrible consequences of a poor choice, wishing you could go back in time and undo what you did.

Either way, all of us are haunted by the guilt of past decisions we have made and poor choices of words we have spoken to people we love. What do we do when that happens? How do we move forward and live a healthy life without being able to change the past? Here are 2 things that will help you move forward in both minor and major mistakes.

1.Make things right

This is the hard step, but as the dividing line between freedom and bondage, it’s worth it. First, admit that what you did was wrong or hurtful.

I know it feels impossible, but you need to own it. It’s very humbling to admit you are wrong, or that you may have hurt someone you love. But guess what? We will all need to do it at some point. We all need to lower our pride, humble ourselves, and admit when we are wrong. Instead of trying to justify your actions or tell someone why they shouldn’t be hurt, why you didn’t mean it that way, why they are too sensitive etc…,

Just. Stop.

Instead, try empathizing with the pain you have caused. Put yourself in their shoes and realize, regardless of your intention, you have hurt them or you have hurt yourself. Take responsibility for your actions and make restitution if necessary. Don’t go all Ross with a, “but we were on a break” (Warning: Only people who watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S will understand this reference and I am not apologizing for that). Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility and see what you can physically do to make it better.

The Bible says in…

1 John 1:9

“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

James 5:16

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”

There is something powerful that happens when we confess our sins to God and to each other, be it a person we’ve hurt or a counselor or Pastor.

While I don’t believe there is anything “magical” on God’s end that happens when we confess our sins, instead what is transformational happens on our end. Jesus already paid the price for all sin, including yours. This means, if you are a believer, all of your past, present, and future sins were taken care of at the cross.

Confession is God’s way of helping us move past the guilt that we’re experiencing for making a choice that created baggage in our lives.

David put it this way,

Psalm 32:5

“Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

Guilt is powerful. Guilt leads to shame and shame leads to a false and broken identity; It causes us to forget that we are righteous sons and daughters of God. And when we buy into the lies shame whispers, we begin to believe we are the sum of our poor choices and mistakes.

That broken identity, if shoved down long enough, will actually create emotional wounds leading to emotional and even physical pain in our lives. That is why it is so important to release your guilt and shame by exposing it to God, a trusted counselor/Pastor, and to the person that you may have wronged or hurt.

2.Learn from the mistake and move forward.

People can be brutal. We humans are not a very forgiving bunch and can turn on you in a hurry. This is why we can’t live for the approval of people but rather the approval of God. God forgives us and reinstates us even when we have difficulty forgiving and reinstating ourselves.

Remember when the apostle Peter denied knowing Jesus?

His fear caused him to betray not only his best friend, but his Savior, and mentor. The guilt was more than he could bear and as such, he pushed aside his true identity and went back to his old life. But check it out, Jesus didn’t leave him there. Instead of being angry with Peter or even hurt, He reinstated Peter’s identity as a righteous son of God, called and equipped to change the world for His glory.

Peter learned from his mistake and allowed the grace of God to catapult him forward.

It would have been easy for him to believe the lie that God was mad at him, that he was useless, that he made too many or too big of mistakes to be forgiven.

Thankfully, he chose to learn from it. He chose to move forward and all us New Testament believers are all affected because of his choice to live into freedom.

You know what else?

If Jesus did that for Peter, He will do it for you. I don’t care what you have done. God is waiting with open arms to not only forgive you but to reinstate your identity and catapult you into a bright future.

Your job is to admit, confess, learn, and move forward. If you can do those 4 things, the toxicity of guilt and shame won’t be able to lie to you, keep you stuck, and shipwreck your future.

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