Erase It

Forget about yesterday....

I had the opportunity to talk with a 7 year old today about what we should do with mistakes. He said to me "yesterday was bad and I didn't do nothing right". I asked him what made him think like that. He said "you remember I just kept making mistakes". The look on his face was sad like he wanted to cry about it. I said to him here's what we're going to do. We're going to forget about it. He said, "but how? You know I didn't do good." I looked around the room for some visual that could help me. My eyes landed on a whiteboard eraser. I told him we can't do anything about what went wrong yesterday so let's just erase it like it never happened. He sat up straight in his chair and began to smile. "Are you serious? We get to erase it?" Yes, I replied. We already have.

To see him smile after was priceless. At 7 he had already learned that mistakes stick with you. They follow you around and cause stress long after they have been committed. The thing is, and this is no deep revelation, they don't have to. No one is exempt from making a mistake. Things happen sometimes in an instant. At others, the offense is a tad bit more calculated. Either way, when mistakes happen we have to do two things. 1. Own that it happened. 2. Erase it from our existence. These two are both important, but I must wager that the second is more so because it is linked to forgiveness. It was evident to me that the little boy hadn't forgiven himself for what happened. He hadn't taken the time to throw his mistakes away. There is nothing gained by forgiving others and continuing to punish yourself when you make a mistake. Own it, erase it, and move forward with your day.

Adayinthelife:-)