After whirling down the basement steps on tiptoe, I opened the washer’s lid to shift the clean clothes to the dryer. My hands found them waterlogged. For a moment, I wondered if I should wring out the water. I don’t have time for this, I sighed. Water dripping through my fingers, I chucked the sodden laundry into the dryer—and the machine broke. For weeks, I strewed wet clothes on couches, beds, and chairs, but eventually had to tell my over-scheduled husband. He responded with grace, even though my mistake cost him precious Saturdays underground with YouTube tutorials and a toolbox.
My mistakes are too numerous to count: calling the pastor’s daughter the wrong name and forgetting my best friend’s birthday and misspelling words on my client’s brochures and breaking the side view mirror off my car and on and on.
For this recovering perfectionist, each mistake stings. If I’m not careful, the sting can morph into a heaviness in my stomach, smothering all joy. Or worse: a bludgeon I wield to punish myself. But I’m learning to see my mistakes how God does: under the light of mercy. And even to see these quotidian errors as gifts.
One of these gifts is the gentle reminder to slow down. Lost keys or spilled coffee can be little prods to reconsider my life rhythms: Are my routines helping me to love God and love my neighbor? If not, what needs to change?
Oftentimes, my mistakes root in the arrhythmia of rushing. And rushing can root in impatience with God-given limitations of time, energy, and capacity. It’s often in refusing to acknowledge my limits—whipping up lunch because I squeezed too many errands into the morning and trying to respond to my son’s infinite questions and sending off texts all at the same time—that I accidentally shatter dinner plates on the tile floor.
Then, for a moment, everything stops.
And that unintended pause is a mercy.
Mistakes also teach humility. When I’m gliding through my daily responsibilities, savoring a professional success or an exultant parenting moment, I can begin to believe pride-rooted illusions. Like the myth of my own perfection and superiority. Or the lie that I don’t really need others’ help, or God’s. Or the delusion that everyday triumphs originate in my own glorious self. How easily I forget Paul’s words: What do you have that you did not receive? (1 Corinthians 4:7) And Jesus’: Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5).
Nothing.
Nada.
Even the breath that blooms in my lungs is a grace.
Though pride hides my faults, masks the complex tension of goodness and evil entwined within my heart, mistakes offer the fresh sea breezes of truth. They break me free of illusion and shake me back to the reality of my fragile bones and finite hours.
Receiving the grace of God after putting too much chili powder in my guests’ dinner (more than once!) helps me to give grace to others. A wise friend pointed out that the Lord’s Prayer guides us to first acknowledge our own failings before God (Forgive us our debts) before noting those of others (as we forgive our debtors). Jesus told his followers to remove the beams bulging from their own eyes before removing the specks in their neighbors’ (Matthew 7: 3-5). Acknowledging my imperfections humbles me; and from a posture of humility, I can be gracious when someone cuts me off in traffic or gets my takeout order wrong.
Remembering my mistakes helps me respond graciously to those of others, but what helps even more is remembering God’s grace. God knows I am made of dust and breath (Psalm 103:14). God knows my lifespan is like the grass (Psalm 103:15). How abundant is God’s grace towards those who come to him for forgiveness! How God deeply exults when we return to him and ask for grace (Luke 15). Oh, the depths of the riches of the love of God that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19)! And it is this grace that I am called to pour out on others, lavish and rich as God has poured out grace on me (Romans 12:1).
When my friend is late to our coffee date. Grace.
When my son needs reminding (for the sixth time) to put on his pants. Grace.
When I disappoint myself again and again. Grace.
Our shortcomings are not reasons to mope in false humility—but goads to rejoice in the exuberant mercy of God. The next time I burn the grilled cheese (again) or put my husband’s earbuds through the wash (again!), I can relish the savor of mercy, feet rooted firmly in the ground.
by Jennifer Toscano 
by Erin Landsee 
by Melinda Tarcon 
