The Consequences of Your Choices Don't Wash Away

I didn't have a choice.
There was no way around it.
I didn't realize it until it was too late.
I take it back.
Let's start again.
The Devil made me do it.


We All Make Easy Mistakes

Mistakes?  We've all made them.  Bad choices?  Yep.  We make wrong turns in life, we ask for "do-overs" that don't ever succeed in erasing a mistake or a hurt.  When we do or say the wrong thing we can't take it back, make it disappear, change it into something else, fix it ... or forget it completely.

Whatever I choose to do counts.

Every action has a consequence.  Everything I say, do and think matters.  Every choice or preference leaves its own specific feedback in the lives of everyone involved ... even when I think I'm making choices that affect only me.  My choices affect my husband, too, whether he knows of them or not.

We all nod in agreement when we think of us all lumped in together, doing small "this or that" items that we know we shouldn't and then having to suffer consequences.  If I forget to return library books on time I will pay a fine. If I eat too much my clothing will not fit (like now, for instance). If I don't keep up with my family's laundry none of us will have clean clothes to wear.  Simple and straightforward, what I do matters.  I get it.  I understand.  No problem.

But.


Got Secrets?

It feels a lot different when sin sits deeper than the surface.  The hidden or secret things a person may do -- on the sly or within the confidence of another person -- that we don't want anyone else to discover don't come out of hiding easily, even when talked to nicely and offered a cookie.  Those secret sins, if uncovered, will change the way others perceive us.  Those secret sins begin to leak, like the juices from rotting food in the refrigerator, and cause people to sniff, wonder and search for the problem.  Soon, the whole place begins to smell funny -- you just can't stop it until you reach in there, find the bad piece, and remove it for good.

Recently, a couple of officers of our Parent-Teacher Organization at school found their secrets uncovered in a check-writing scheme, in which tens of thousands of dollars left the group's bank account and went to their personal accounts.  Someone caught a funny smell in the air, began searching, and within a period of time, the rotten thing showed.  The school district removed it, and now the police have the job of handling the situation as the law dictates.  Whether a fine or jail time comes to them in the future, the ladies will pay a penalty.

These women can find forgiveness from God, but the aftermath will take years to rebuild in the community and maybe in their families, as well.  Excuses they offered don't matter.  They lied and stole.  They have to get busy doing whatever it takes to show that they can handle trust again.

Secret sin has to be removed in order to live in harmony with our mates (as well as others around us) and with God.  God won't bless us with sin in the way, and our husbands won't be able to figure out our odd behavior, which secretiveness brings, no matter how we try to conceal the falsehoods and live as if nothing foul is leaching from the back of the refrigerator.

Choosing to deviate from God's path for you may appear in your life as:

- financial indiscretion or a shopping addiction.
- eating (too much or too little) in secret.
- having an opposite-sex friendship that feels fulfilling and seems innocent.
- lying -- of all kinds and sizes.
- engaging in an affair (emotional or sexual) with subsequent blame/rationale.
- uncontrolled electronic/technological activity.
- insert your secret sin here:  _________________


You Can Find Forgiveness and You Will Have Work to Do!

No matter what your poor choice(s),  your deviation from the right path, God will forgive -- if you ask with a contrite (sincerely sorry) heart.  A mighty thought to have is that all of us have the power to change, through His grace and mercy, and to climb out of the pits we have dug to higher and higher ground, led by Him, not by man.

But we won't be able to change the consequences, erase the wrongs we did, or make everyone touched by our thoughtlessness and selfishness feel warm and fuzzy, hunky-dory, and right as rain in one prayerful act.  

There's nothing like forgiveness to cheer up a human being.  At the same time, there's nothing like dealing with the consequences of our actions to keep us mindful of just how far our own selfishness and tunnel vision took us, and then, we see our husbands, children, friends and family alongside our jagged pathway, as if thrown from the vehicle ... bedraggled, hurt (maybe gravely), confused, distrustful, and in shock.

God will forgive me.  Then the hard part begins.

I have to work really hard to get back the devotion, trust, love, and support of those whom I may have ignored, hurt, betrayed, deceived, or confused.  Did I say "work really hard?"  I tend to understate things when I'm not overstating them.  The truth is, I will not get off anywhere close to easy, and should I?  Absolutely not.   If I have acted carelessly, I should have to prove that I can act carefully.  I must take as much time as my victims need in order to regain their trust and all the other attributes that I have lost by my own choices.  I will live under a microscope for as long as it takes to show that I know I have done wrong, that I want to change, and that I work for that change.


God will not wash away the consequences.  The sin?  Yes.  The rest is up to me.  I must sincerely work at changing myself through prayer, learning, studying, sharing and communicating well with the man I married, as well as with those people in my life who should be in it.  Those I have invited into my life via the intrusive, wrong behaviors, I must usher out and close the door for good.  For the good of everyone involved!


A Sin Is a Sin, No Matter How Small

While committing adultery or grand theft don't seem the same as holding a library book too long or driving faster that the posted speed, all have consequences that we must face.

Continuing to try to hide, working to keep up appearances, hoping no one mentions a difficult subject or moves in the direction of your secret is no way to live.  Make the changes now.  Take on your own sin, take it to the Father of All and lay it out before him.  Every stinking, rotten detail.  And ask His forgiveness.

Then, get to work.  You can do it.  Know how I know?  You'll have God on your side.

Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing

  When a woman marries, she may have only an inkling about forgiveness, aside from a few "that's okays" casually tossed in the direction of the "I'm sorrys" that come from small offenses.  Misdemeanors often go unnoticed, sentence served, case dismissed. 

Medium-sized transgressions might let us stick to "no harm done" reactions, but both sizes can build to an invisible invader called "resentment."  Carry a grudge around with you long enough, unspoken and boxing it up with others of its kind, and that's what you get.   To conquer it requires breaking it down into parts; your job comes in deciding which pieces need to be dealt with in forgiveness or understood in loving forgetfulness.

Large-sized wrongs, on the other hand, provide very large hurts, therefore, reasons for offering big forgiveness.  The bad stuff.  Shocking, horrible, beyond-belief wrongs that two people in a marriage never thought possible.  The things people quit trying to overcome and bandage with divorce papers.  When a couple takes this route, suffering succeeds only in hiding love and people build fortresses of regret and resentment to further block the small deeds that make love real. And so, they stop "feeling" it.  Forgiveness can conquer any of these sins.

We always have the option to forgive.  We always have the ability to forgive.  We do not always have the grace to forgive, nor the strength, desire or decency to offer it.  Worse, we want what is ours, so to speak.  We want to have the wrong erased ... sometimes along with the wrong-doer.  We want to have the wrong-doer feel our pain, and to never cease feeling sorry for it -- our own, self-prescribed restitution.

At this point, at the place we stand and wish for destruction of our enemy or for him to feel the pain of his erroneous ways toward us, we make our biggest mistake:  trying to devise proper punishment.

Paul writes in Colossians 3:13

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (emphasis added)

As the Lord forgave you.  As the Lord forgave YOU.

A person offering forgiveness should:

Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
Completely.
Without reservation.
Without asking restitution.
Without charging a fee.
Without doubt.
With no grudges or resentment.
With love and trust.
Without remembering, rehearsing or reliving the wrong to remind you of it, just to keep you on the right path.
With God's help, guidance, direction, grace, power, sustenance, love, and desire for righteousness.

In other words, forgive with the completeness of God, to the best of our ability.

Imagine the lines above coming from God, but in reverse.  Imagine taking God's forgiveness while he holds reservation about it ... doesn't trust you to do better and go on from here having learned something.  Think about forgiveness at a price -- a dollar amount, a physical trade, a mental toeing the line.  Consider taking it while knowing He resents giving it, or has a list of wrongs against you that you don't know and can't understand.  Imagine asking His forgiveness and having Him remember and remind you about your sin daily or weekly or EVER ... just to keep you in line.  Imagine Him offering forgiveness, but doing it without help, guidance, direction, grace, power, sustenance, and love ... and expecting righteousness without fail.  These are the things humans do to each other to exact punishment in exchange for forgiveness -- a sad, second-rate rendition of forgiveness.  We attach strings.

To forgive without punishing we need to:

Not punish a person by reminding him of his sin and how/how much it hurt.
Not advertise his bad choices to others.
Not throw a person's sin in his face to vindicate your status as victim.
Not withhold loving action until he straightens up and flies right.  We need to always love.
Not expect perfect behavior.  We don't offer it, how can anyone else?
Be prepared to continue offering forgiveness.  People make mistakes.
Pray for everything we need to uphold forgiveness.  God is our rock, our fortress, our deliverer, our strength, our all.

I can easily understand what forgiveness feels like it when I receive it even if I have difficulty accepting it. Conversely, I cannot easily feel the goodness and completeness of giving it. I often prefer to wallow in self-pity a while and would like for the person who sinned against me to suffer consequences. Dire consequences, please.  Turn up the pain and suffering dial to "Super-Boil".  I have trouble not playing the martyr and not suffering at length. I can see forgiveness as something the other person should somehow deserve -- whether earned or bought -- when I want to see it that way.  All of that = WRONG.

The desire to punish and the lack of timely forgiving action oppose God. They have no worth, other than to harm, and I have to -- have to -- work at seeing through God's perspective rather than my own damaged and warped view.  My human view.  This includes seeing myself as insufficiently capable of that kind of godliness and Christlikeness, unless I enlist God's help to sustain my weakness and, truth be told, inability to learn from my own mistakes.  The number one mistake?  Not offering forgiveness as soon as possible.

I need forgiveness from God as I prepare to offer forgiveness.  I need forgiveness for harboring hurtful thoughts, for thinking in a dastardly way about someone, for feeling dislike and hate as they bubble to the surface ... the byproducts of feeling wronged.  When I ask forgiveness, I also need to ask for guidance, strength and humility in giving His brand of forgiveness -- the kind that ignores the effect on me and lets me work past it and on to something better.

When we sin against God, he forgives us when we ask, and then picks right up and continues with his plan -- maybe around what we have done or maybe pushing right through it and He uses the situation for good.

We, in our own offering of forgiveness, need to come to the same place -- to forgive without punishing, and to continue forward toward the good.  When we stop looking back to the place of pain, the forgiveness will come easier, and the view into the future brightens.  If we continually look back into the darkness of the past (hurt and pain), we will succeed only in dimming the light ahead of us and have to work harder to feel the warmth and goodness of clarity that comes from forgiveness.

To forgive and not punish really takes the extra work out of it for us.  Is it not harder to hang onto the snarling, many-toothed desire to bite down and not let go, like an animal hanging onto its prey, than it is to not bite down and hang on at all?

Easier said than done?  Of course.  Yet,  God provides the tools and we can do it, with practice, determination, and a willing heart.


Other Articles in This Series:

• Ten Ways to Love: An Introduction
• Ten Ways to Love: Answer without Arguing
• Ten Ways to Love: Enjoy without Complaint
• Ten Ways to Love: Give without Sparing
• Ten Ways to Love: Listen without Interrupting 
• Ten Ways to Love: Share without Pretending
• Ten Ways to Love: Speak without Accusing
• Ten Ways to Love: Forgive without Punishing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Pray without Ceasing 
• Ten Ways to Love: Trust without Wavering