The Right Choice

Just got back from church and had to write down this little snippet from Terry's sermon:

Sometimes its not about making the right choice.  Its about making the choice right.

Oh how that rang true to me this morning!

I made a choice this week and I've wrestled and wrestled over whether it was the right one or not.  I admitted to someone a sin I had committed against them.  It was one of which I was very ashamed and had sworn I would never own up to.  However, I wanted my relationship with this person to be right again and I had been stewing and fretting so much over a lie they had told me that I begin to realize that I needed to get the log out of my own eye before I criticized the speck in their eye.

It was disastrous!  It not only caused more division between us but also caused that person to wrongfully assume other bad things about me.  I first regretted coming clean.  But the longer I carry that regret, the more clearly I see that it is not my fault that it snowballed like it did.  My motive was pure:  to restore a relationship.  I can't help what happens from here.  I made the choice right and in the end it means I made the right choice.

By saying I made the choice right, I am saying that it was not an impulsive, off the cuff decision.  It was made prayerfully and over time.  It was in honor of my commitment to love and was in effort to end the ways I have failed at love.  From 1 Corinthians 13 - The Message 

LOVE:
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end. 

As I continue on in the love assignment I've given myself, I find that the more ways I intentionally love those who are sometimes hard to love, I realize that this in turn releases me from anger, regret, guilt and condemnation.  I know where my heart is.  What they choose to believe is between them and God.

And when someone continually sees the worst in you, sometimes love means letting them go.  In order to truly love, we must love ourselves first.