The Sum of My Past Mistakes

I didn't know that my heart could break this much, but it did. I always knew that someday the mistakes of my past would come back to haunt me. I jut never expected it to hurt so much when they did.
To say that I wasn't living a Christian lifestyle for a few years would be an understatement. I was drinking all the time, having sex with my boyfriends, even a couple one night stands. I am not proud of these things or the way that I used to live my life, but I know that I am no longer that person. I had been looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places. I had grown up never hearing that I was beautiful, feeling unloved by my parents, especially my dad, who was not only physically but emotionally absent from my life. I am not making excuses for the bad choices that I made in my life, but not having someone to show and tell me what love really looks like, it made it really easy to try to find it in all the wrong places.
I had been made to believe that because I am a different person, and I have been made a new creation in Christ, that my past sins were no longer what defined who I am. Well, apparently I was misinformed. I will forever be identified by the sum of my past mistakes.
Maybe someday, there will be someone that can love me for the mistakes I've made and will love me in spite of them, and instead of not loving me because of them. I have never felt that I deserved to be loved and now I know why. It's a painful truth that I have to come to accept.
In John a woman is brought to Jesus who was caught in the act of adultery. The Pharisees wanted to test Jesus, so they asked Him what should be done to her. Jesus states that the first person who is without sin could be the first to cast a stone. One by one people began walking away. By His own words Jesus was the only one who could have thrown a stone at her. However, instead of condemning her He tells her to go, and sin no more. If Jesus, who was like us in all ways but sin, can not only not condemn a woman, who by his own words he should have, but also forgave her, then I should also be forgiven, no? This passage was my penance once. I didn't understand the importance of it at the time. Now I understand it was probably one of the better penances I have ever received.
One of the only things worse than the actual shame of having lived this lifestyle, is to know that it will follow me wherever I go.