Lately, I have been making  a lot of mistakes, it seems. Making mistakes is hard. The hardest part is forgiving yourself for those mistakes. My two biggest ones have been very costly in either time or money. A week ago I scratched a car while parking, unfortunately it happened to be a black Mercedes. That was costly in money. I still can’t believe I did it. I have never in my life hit a car while parking. It turned out fine in the end, the other driver was very nice about it all, but it was still expensive and something I had to forgive myself for. The second mistake came today. I realized that this paperwork I just worked so hard to send into the US government is missing a check with it. I was so frustrated when I realized I missed this. I called the government but they said there is nothing they can do and it will be sent back to me and I will have to refile it all. UGH! That means more time, as if this adoption has taken so much precious time already.

It’s at times like this that I realize I have to listen to what God is saying to me through my circumstances. I think he is teaching me to extend grace to myself. I don’t find it really hard to extend grace to others, I would consider myself a pretty forgiving person, but forgiving myself is REALLY hard. I wish I hadn’t hit that car and I wish I had sent in the right about of money to the government, but I can’t change any of that now. All I can do is move on and try to do better next time. God is so quick to forgive our mistakes, I wish I could be that quick to forgive my own and not have regret. I will regret that I didn’t do the paperwork correctly for a few more months until it gets all done, but ultimately it won’t matter. Our daughter will come home, someday and this will all be a memory, or nightmare. 🙂 This adoption process has been SO much harder than our first. We didn’t realize how easy we had it the first time. We breezed through the paperwork and only waited three months to get Joshua. Oh how I wish it were that easy this time. But you know, we will appreciate this when it’s all done. Our girl will know how much we loved her. Today I had moments when I was tempted to give up. I said to myself, “this whole thing is just too hard, I should just give up.” But I look at her face and realize I can’t. She is depending on me and waiting for us. She doesn’t care that it will now take us a month longer than it might have, it won’t matter in the moment we meet her. She will finally have a family she has waited her whole life for and the time won’t matter. I have to look at it all in light of that.

Have grace with yourself and others. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Look at things in light of the future, will this really matter in five years? Most things won’t. We are all human and make mistakes, but we have to move on from those mistakes and not let them define who we are. We have to remind our selves Whose we are and He sees us without the mistakes.