My best friend's wife left him a few years ago. She'd had enough and I couldn't blame her. He came home from work with sometimes more than a few beers in his stomach and an ill temper. His house was falling apart and he was a hoarder. Kept everything and made this ramshackle of a house even worse. She couldn't keep up with the kids, the bad temper, the cleaning, and the absence of money and she took her kids and left. Didn't tell him where.
My friend was more than repentent. He didn't fully understand why she left, but truly missed the kids, her, everything. He didn't know what to do. And I prayed before I talked to him.
I told him sitting at his unnoticed cluttered kitchen table that it was wrong to suggest that God forgives sin. Sin goes on, lives a life of its own. Acts like a domino causing another sin. Then another. It grows sometimes like a cancer. God forgives the sinner, but the sin continues on. I told him that if a man were to wonder sometimes what God had in mind for his life, what the purpose of his life was meant to be, and that he had no answers in that regard, he could probably be content in knowing it might be just to stop the sin from continuing. To right the wrong. To fix the roof that was leaking. To mind the sacred family dining table. To fix it. To make the attempt.
It was like he looked at that table for the first time in his life seeing the clutter. And he openly cried. God saw his conviction that day.
Later, when we were re roofing his house, his wife drives up and let's the 5 year old see his dad. My friend jumped down and hugged him and went inside. I stayed on the roof and his wife stayed in the car. We finished the roof and after some time she'd come by more often.
They're back together now and closer I think. He, like you, understood the consequence of sin and were convicted not to repeat his same mistakes. He fixed some things and so did she, but they were not perfect. There's still some siding that needs to be installed. There's still his hoarding that's moved outside, there's still a few arguments. The point is, though, that the conviction of the heart is the change God seeks and not the fixing. As far as fixing sins goes - saints don't even break even.
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