Mailboxes and fixing…

My mailbox is fixed!

A little more than a month ago, I posted about someone hitting my mailbox in “Mailboxes and patience…” That post has the damaged pictures too.

I was bothered by the incident and failed at the immediate patience part that was needed, in dealing with an accident. It wasn’t on purpose and it wasn’t really a big deal, and today is an update on lessons learned…

It takes time to correct mistakes.

It took a little over a month to finally get the insurance details, the brick order in and the mason on site to tear down and replace my mailbox.

A month is not a long time, but it made me consider my life and the “accidents” that I’ve had along the way and the time it took to repair those mistakes.

Sometimes the mistakes are with others that we unintentionally hurt. These are hard to repair, especially if we hurt someone and didn’t know it. It’s important that we take the time to repair though, because we have the opportunity to change their lives and ours when we fix the issue. Once the issue is fixed it can cause us to be able to grow our influence on them and others because of the experience.

Sometimes the mistakes are with a job, where we didn’t stay within the plan. We all have rules, guidelines or direction form our jobs. Once in awhile we stray, purposefully or not. When we move off the plan, we impact our companies, our bosses and ourselves negatively and may destroy our future opportunities. When we correct the issues, God has a chance to bless us and help us to do more than obey a rule, but also change the lives of our coworkers and leadership.

The repairs are often better than the original.

We learn from our mistakes and we get to change for the better, because we realized the error in our way - notice that I said “in our way.” The things that we don’t fix will almost always get in the way of what the Lord may have in store for us, and in the way of how we change other’s lives.

In looking at my mailbox, you likely can’t see much difference, but here are the changes:

• The mailbox is set a little higher.

According to the mason, the height was wrong to begin with and the letter box was too low too. It’s now easier for us and the mailman to get into.

When we rebuild our lives, from errors, we can change the outside that people see, so we can impact them more effectively.

• The mailbox is internally reinforced.

The mason did a better job with the inside block to make sure that this box will stand longer, even if hit.

This is the best part of changing, in our lives - we get it right on the inside, so that the outside can be more effective, like above.

• The mailbox has new character.

There’s still some marks on the number plate, that may fade, like a scar, one day, but it added some history and character to the box.

This happens with us too. Once we get the failure right, we still have a few scars, but we have grown from hem and we gain new character from the bad experience.

Lessons learned: Fixing is important, but make sure it’s from the inside out.

Thoughts: Have you reinforced your failures?

#failalot

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