Wincing at mistakes
So I've made mistakes before. The kind of mistakes that make me wince when the memories creep up on me in the stillness before sleep late at night. Sometimes, it seems, the thought of forgiveness and redemption can drown out the self-reproach and allow me to drift off into a slumber. Other times the wince seems to spread down from my face to my heart as feelings of guilt, iniquity and shame overwhelm me to the point of insomnia. We weren't made to live like this; sluggishly carrying an eternal feeling of guilt around, like a heavy suitcase without wheels. We also weren't made to leave that suitcase standing at the side of the road like a lonely commuter who just missed the bus. It's part of our past, therefor it's part of us. Sometimes we don't realise we have this thing we carry around, like an awkward backpack with the straps broken, lost in the woods. Often we don't even grasp that we've been carrying around our mistakes and shortcomings ...