And the shame of not choosing higher
And all the disappointing moments fade into God

(Chorus)
No mistakes have been made in God,
All the ways that we seem to fail,
In God all fade, all fades into God

– Rickie Byars Beckwith, All Fades Into God

Having learned about the Law of Attraction growing up, I knew that my thoughts created my life. As a result, I spent a good bit of time beating myself over the head for “choosing” wrong, or thinking wrong. Thankfully, I also learned about the Law of Attraction as part of a theology, not a philosophy for living unto itself. However, I never really got it until I heard those lyrics from Rickie Byars’ song, All Fades Into God.

See, try as we might to manipulate our world, first by external force, now through the influence of our thoughts, we may still make mistakes. You may turn right when every fiber of your Being told you to turn left. You can spend a good bit of time sitting at a crossroads, beating yourself over the head saying that you should have turned right back there. What you miss is the opportunity to choose again, the opportunity to go a different way.

Forgiveness allows you to take from the mistake what you need and leave the rest. It allows you to move past the “mistake” and into a state of grace. From that state you can experience love and wholeness. Better than that, it allows you to move into action.

Whatever choices you made that brought you to this place in your life, take responsibility for them. Taking responsibility means that you acknowledge that you made the choice. Let go of it then. That time is past, there is nothing that you can do about it now. What you can do now is choose in this moment. Every time you choose, make it with all the courage that you can muster based on everything you know in that moment. Know that that was what you did in the past. Put down the stick. You can forgive yourself.

In Spirit,
Nneka

PS. If this post looks familiar, it’s because it was originally posted as a guest post on Kara Leah’s site.