The human mind is a miraculous, yet funny thing. The other day, I took a four-mile walk. Nothing extraordinary, just a walk along the Rindge Rails to Trails path. The next morning, however, I was feeling pretty good about myself. “I’ve got this. I could walk a million miles. I’m really committed to this exercise routine.”

            For a brief shining moment, I identified completely with that success. The walk wasn’t just something I had done; it became evidence of who I was. I was disciplined, motivated, and healthy.

            Then a few days later, I made a mistake. I had invitations printed for work and realized afterward that I had put the wrong date on them. Immediately, a different voice showed up. “How could you be so careless? You should have caught that.” Once again, I wasn’t merely looking at something I had done, I was turning it into an identity. The mistake became evidence of who I was.

            But here’s the interesting part. The next day, I was still thinking about the invitation mistake. The confidence from the four-mile walk had already faded. That felt like a fluke.  The mistake, however, felt permanent. Isn’t that strange?

            We often treat our successes as temporary and our failures as truth. One good choice becomes luck; one bad choice becomes character. One healthy day is an accident; one careless moment is proof of who we really are. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to give our mistakes more authority than our successes, but spiritually, I don’t think that’s how God sees us.

            Scripture is filled with people who made mistakes - sometimes spectacular ones. We all remember that Moses lost his temper, Peter denied Jesus three times in one evening, Jonah tried to escape doing God’s work by running away, and Thomas doubted until he had real proof. Yet God never reduced them to their worst moment. God continued to see the whole person.

            And perhaps that’s what grace is: refusing to let a single moment become the entire story. The four-mile walk was real, and so was the wrong date on the invitation, but neither one tells the whole truth about me. I am not as amazing as I felt the morning after the walk, nor am I as incompetent as I felt after the printing mistake.

            Instead, I am just me…an ordinary person learning, growing, succeeding sometimes, stumbling sometimes, and loved by God through all of it.

            Maybe that’s a lesson worth remembering.  Thankfully, all of us are more than our best day, and we are certainly all more than our worst one.

Journeying together in faith and love,

Rev. Candi