Greetings brothers of 
God can transform your mistakes into something good. He is able to cover the error. To protect yourself from shame. To have a solution before dawn.
It was the first day back to school, at the beginning of March. And the teacher insisted with the same pedagogical method that she had been using since the first grade: asking each student where they had spent their vacations. One by one they raised their hands and said aloud the places they had visited. And the vast majority had a story to tell. The mountains. The sea. The carp by the river. The snow somewhere remote.
It was then that I got tired of being poor, I suppose. Or of not being able to go anywhere, almost never.
"I did not go anywhere, because I did not want to,"
I confessed with my hand raised
- What did you not want? Replied the teacher.
-Yes, because my dad told me he could choose: either we went to some place on vacation or I built a fort.
-A strong? How a strong one? He answered.
At this point I had won the attention of the whole class. It was the first time I felt that I was finally important to others, and I was no longer the invisible student of all time.
Obviously, the fort was a lie, but for some reason I felt that a good idea had occurred to me to be no less than the others. It was just that for this time, it was my turn to be the center of attention and comments.
"A real fort," I added, "a fort as the soldiers have in the movies, with trunks around, with a mangrullo to see the Indians from afar, with weapons, with a flag ... my dad did it in the back of my house because he is a carpenter.
-That good. With such a gift it is logical that you did not want to go on vacation - the teacher finished.
At recess I was surrounded by almost all the companions asking for details. And since I no longer felt ashamed of not having gone on vacation, I did not skimp on adding what I could think of to the virtual construction of the back of my house. I said it was huge, real size. That I could calmly house the whole class, that surely some amusement park would want to buy it, some day. All the students looked at me in amazement. What a lucky guy. Have a dad that builds a fort for you alone. Those were real vacations, yes sir.
But someone decided to ruin my day.
-If it's true, we want to go see him -said a "bad mate" named Marcelo Negri.
-Today? - I stammered - today is not going to be able, because my mom is very sick (at this point, one more lie was a speck more to the tiger).
-Then tomorrow, or did you invent all that about the fort? -He said.
-How am I going to invent it? If I say that I have a strong, it is because it is true, "I replied angrily, while I realized that I had just got into a serious problem.
That day I returned home devastated. My own mouth had put me between the sword and the wall. I thought everything was going to end up in class and I never imagined that someone was going to insist on wanting to see my fort. I could not say that we had disarmed him because it was not logical, let alone confess the truth, because he was going to transform me into a political dead man for the whole school. And that was the worst night I remember of all my childhood.
At about one o'clock in the morning, I could not take it anymore and I appeared in my parents' room, crying. I confessed that I had felt bad for not going to any place on vacation and that I invented the fort. And the worst thing is that Marcelo wanted to come to see him tomorrow, after school.
Obviously, it's not worthwhile transcribing what they told me and the faces of amazement. My mother looked at me with some pity and told me that she was going to have to confess the truth to everyone and apologize for such a lie.
I went back to the bed even more shattered and tried to sleep.
At fifteen minutes, I felt my dad touch my shoulder.
-Get up. And wrap up, it's cold.
-Where we go?
"To build that fort," he said, and turned around.
And that night, almost without talking to us and under the early morning dew, I helped my dad build a fort ... or something similar. An old dog scoop made a barracks, some old tarpaulins served as a roof. Some limber branches made, in turn, trunks. And from the mangrullo, we put a ladder that I personally took care of covering with fig leaves. When we finished, almost two hours later, my dad, (who by the way was always a man of few words) told me:
-Now you can bring whoever you want, but when they leave, you and I are going to talk, long and hard.
The rest of the story is predictable. Although my friend found that he had exaggerated a bit, he could not deny that what I had said was the pure truth. And that afternoon, we played for a while the soldiers and Indians.
But at night, I had a talk that I could not forget, even with the passage of time.
-What you did was very wrong- said my dad- and because of that, you will have penance. This time I saved you because I'm your father and I did not want you to be embarrassed. But in life, you have to walk with the truth, always, even if it's ugly or you do not like it. The truth is the only thing that will be a good person.
I apologized and thanked him for saving my skin. But mainly to help me understand the love of God.
Today I am a man. And many times, I screw up again. I'm wrong, I shut up when I should speak or I speak when I should have kept quiet. And then it is when I go to the presence of the Lord and tell him that I am conscious that I was wrong, but that please ... build me the strong one. I tell him that if my dad ever did it, he can also help me out of the mess. And in more than one dawn, I feel that the Father touches my shoulder and tells me that somehow we are going to fix it. And the fort builds me up. Even though I was wrong, it does not leave me embarrassed. Pay my debts, get me out of the mess, put your face out for me.
Of course, afterwards we have to talk "long and hard", but He always helps me to fix those errors that devastate my soul.
If maybe you made an ugly mistake, or you fell back into what you promised not to return, or if you walked away from Him and did things that you are ashamed to just tell them. I know that it is biblical to have to assume the consequences, but I also know that infinity of times, He can transform your mistakes into something good. He is able to cover the error. To protect yourself from shame. To have a solution before dawn. Do not ever forget it. He is a great strongman.
