Redeeming Regret

I have a few minutes to share a little something with you here before I have to get the baby to bed. She’s been fussy lately because of — I think — some eczema that showed up on her face. I don’t know. We’ll wait to see what the doctor says at her appointment next week.

Anyways, I have so many thoughts and ideas racing through my mind I could probably send out a couple of posts a day! But, alas! I am a mother of seven children, and you get only as many posts as I have time to actually write!

When I do finally get the chance to type up an article, it’s usually one of the ideas at the very top of the list. The cream on the top, if you will. Out of all my ideas, it’s what I consider might be the most helpful to others. It is usually something I feel is the most important.

Today’s article is something that has been on my heart to share for a while. I just did a video on it the other day, with the help of my oldest son Phoenix, who loves to film and edit videos (his newest hobby). Below this post, you will see the script for that video (except for the introduction, which I pretty much winged). You can read that, or maybe you would like to view the whole video. Your choice! 🙂

But here’s a little personal note from me that will help you understand the video once you do watch it.

As some of you already know, I have struggled with feelings of regret for quite some time. Now, I don’t feel free to tell everyone exactly over what. There were other people involved, and this is not just my story to tell. What I can tell you, however, is that I understand what it is to make a stupid choice, from whatever motivation, and to have to live with the aftermath.

I’ve talked to other people who have shared their very sad stories with me, many of them in a rather matter-of-fact tone of voice. I think that since the incident for some of them happened years ago, they’ve managed to mostly move past it. They’ve gotten to the point to where it’s no longer a fresh wound. But I know that they still hurt when they have a little extra time to linger over the memory.

When dealing with regret, there are some things I think are important for us to understand:

First of all, we must understand that guilt is healthy.

Yes, I did just say that. So many people run away from their guilt; they make a hundred rationalizations for why the choice they made was a good choice. Or, even if they can’t bring themselves to label it precisely as “good,” they at least want to believe that they “had no other choice,” as a form of self-exoneration. But, they really do themselves no favors. Guilt is a necessary part of our healing.

We have to face our wrongdoings before we can truly rise above them. We have to grieve over our sin. We can’t heal from something we haven’t yet confronted as it is. Until then, we’ve only dealt with the surface.

It is necessary to muster the courage to look our ugly faces in the mirror and see ourselves for who we really are: vile sinners who have wickedly disobeyed a just and holy God. If we think there is nothing that needs fixing, we won’t make an effort to fix it. So, accepting our true, moral guilt is the first step toward healing.

Second of all, we must understand that repentance is crucial.

Acknowledging that we’ve done wrong is an appropriate starting place. But, we must also make the choice to change, and commit to making that happen. Saying “I’m sorry” a million times gets old. People won’t believe it until they see it, as the saying goes.

God won’t believe it, either. Even Jesus preached repentance, which means to make a complete turnaround (Matthew 4:17).

We can’t vomit up our sins, only to return to them:

As a dog returns to his own vomit,

So a fool repeats his folly.

Proverbs 26:11

And though works cannot save us — neither doing good works, nor abstaining from bad — the Bible makes clear that our lifestyle indicates whether or not we have truly had a change of heart. In other words, if we have genuinely repented of our sins, it will show. Likewise, if there has been no true repentance, that will show, too:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? DO NOT BE DECEIVED. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such WERE some of you. BUT you were washed, BUT you were sanctified, BUT you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11 [emphasis added]

All who truly repent of their sins and believe in Jesus’ death on the cross as payment for those sins, plus in His resurrection from the dead, will be saved. God will cleanse them of their previous sins. Even Christians who sin after having believed can be healed in order to continue moving forward in their walk with the Lord. Perfection is not expected; a sincere change of heart, is.

For me, repentance happened years ago, but overcoming my guilt feelings after the fact has been a struggle. Even though I don’t really need to anymore, I find that I say I’m sorry over and over again, but not so much to other people as to myself and to God. I’m sorry I wrecked Your plans for me, I’m sorry I didn’t live up to my potential, I’m sorry I hurt so many people. I was selfish and stupid and short-sighted all wrapped up into one . . . I’m sorry for that. This pertains to my next point:

Last of all, we need to understand that Jesus gives us permission to forgive ourselves, even if nobody else will. 

This sounds a little bit like “psycho babble,” but here’s what I mean: we need to cling to God’s forgiveness and believe in it so much that it becomes how we view ourselves, too. God says, “I forgive you,” so we can receive that grace and slap it like a sticker on our foreheads so that every time we look into the mirror, we see “I’m forgiven” written across ourselves. Then it becomes so real to us that we eventually find that we no longer hate ourselves like we used to; we find that we’ve forgiven ourselves just like God has.

This, my dear friends, has been the hardest part for me. Maybe some people struggle mostly with admitting guilt; maybe some struggle mostly with making a change; but I struggle mostly with overcoming an intense self-loathing. I need to learn to receive God’s forgiveness.

Thankfully, this is a journey with an uphill slant. Though it has taken me a long time to get to where I am now, and it will probably take me a long time to get to where God wants me to be eventually, I can see how God is moving me forward. There truly are sparkles of true joy in my life as I realize that once again, God’s grace has been lavished and poured out over my life.

[Complete video script]

I remember myself as a little girl: carefree, trusting, full of buoyancy and hope. I didn’t know the meaning of regret. That was something I didn’t discover until I became older.

I had thought that if I had a destiny for my life, that destiny would inevitably pull me toward itself. Everything that was meant to happen for me would happen. Dreams would burst open like blossoms on a flower; longings that had grown and grown inside my young heart would finally reach up into the sky like branches on a tree. And I, I would be that tree, firm and solid.

Glittering . . . glittering like the shimmer of sun on leaves, my optimism persisted well into the coldness of what was real — until what was real almost swallowed me up into its shadow. What was real? It was what I hadn’t wanted to know about myself. It was the true-ness of a heart that not only dreams, but also sins.

That sin. That sin began as a prick of curiosity to know the forbidden unknown. A hint of discontent. A grain of disappointment. For the first time, I wondered: did God really know what He was doing with my life? Could I really trust Him?

And though I didn’t realize it yet, that is when the darkness came.

A path littered with bitter memories I try to forget, but can’t. Choices made that can’t be unmade. Lives twisted into ugly shapes and sent limping down alternate courses they were never intended to take. Scars that won’t completely heal. Wounds that keep hurting, and hurting. Does time really heal?

Regret. I wanted to escape what I had done, like Adam and Eve hiding from God even when they knew they couldn’t. I wished I could erase the past and start over. I looked, and I could see what might have been, could almost touch it with my fingertips . . . But it was always just out of reach. It never could be again. It was lost to me forever.

Maybe you know what I mean. What is your greatest regret? What is the one thing you wish you could change about yourself, about your life, that you can’t? Is it someone you hurt? A risk you should have taken, but didn’t? Or a risk you took when you shouldn’t have? Is it a person you said goodbye to? Or is it a person you can’t even say goodbye to because that person isn’t here anymore? Because of you.

The regret feels like an enormous, suffocating wave of darkness sometimes. Desperate, you feel trapped and want to get out, but you can’t. I know that feeling. That trapped feeling.

It’s easy to say that Christ has freed us from our sins, but it’s hard to live like it’s true . . .

When those sins look back at us through the eyes of people we hurt. Or when our arms ache with emptiness from the child that should be cradled in them . . . but isn’t. And the darkness comes closer and closer and blocks out the light, the warmth, the hope. Destiny didn’t come through for us. No, it betrayed us. Or did we betray it?

Life has to be lived, so we live it. We wash dishes, and sweep floors, and paint walls. Years pass into years. We get distracted. But the pain and guilt and heavy shame return sometimes. We cry a little, then dry our tears. The next meal has to be made, the next floor swept. We don’t have time for regret, we feel. But it lingers. Always hidden under the surface, back down into the blur of our past, stuffed into a grimy corner of our history.

And then something changes. Something starts to shimmer again. A little glimmer of brightness sneaks out from behind the clouds. We had been okay before, we had been brave enough to face life and the aftermath of our choices, and we had been okay. But this is different. This is a white hot sparkle of real joy. Where did it come from?

It’s a gift. We hadn’t thought we deserved to be happy again. But we are. We hadn’t thought we deserved to have people trust us again, or even love us. But they do.

God, through them, reminds us of something we had forgotten — or maybe had never truly known: He loves us. That simple. We failed Him and we know it. We’re sorry for it. In fact, we’ve been sorry for it over and over and over again. We have asked for forgiveness more times than we can count. We believe that Jesus died for that sin, for those sins. We see our ugly selves up on that cross and know that’s where we should be. But Jesus put Himself there instead. And He says, “Be free. I give you permission. I want you to enjoy my grace. Can you do that for Me?”

We had never thought of it that way before. How can we despise this gift He is giving us, that He keeps on giving us, that He has never stopped and never will stop giving us!

The child, carefree, trusting, full of buoyancy and hope: That person hasn’t died. She’s still here. Regret is real. But it isn’t the final word. Redemption is. Freedom and hope and joy are ours. One day we will look into the eyes of Christ. Looking back into ours, we will see — not our guilt, not our shame, but His love and His longing . . . for us.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: 

“For Your sake we are killed all day long;

We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39