I’ve read some pretty nice sayings about living life with no regrets. Frankly, I think they’re just plum stupid. Or callous. Or narcissistic. Or evidence of amnesia.
On the one hand I could accept the idea of living without regrets as a forward statement. To live my life with such wisdom and forethought that I create no regrets by my chosen actions but even this idea is flawed. We all make decisions – considered or the snap variety – based on doing our best with the knowledge we have and sometimes those things don’t go so well.
To have no regret for how I may have hurt or affected someone for the worse – is callous.
To see no need (even when it’s pointed out and explained) to regret those things could be narcissistic.
To not regret the things that have hurt myself in some way, would be stupid.
To simply never recognise that I am not a perfect person and I am capable of making wrong or poor or silly or bad choices is also pretty dense.
To never remember these things might be because we haven’t ever truly faced the fact that we ourselves are incomplete/broken/messed up/imperfect. Or it might be a ‘survival’ kind of thing. Mistakes of the past can be so very heavy. It may be because once we’ve given them to The Lord we get so free we simply and truly don’t recall them anymore. Most of us tho live with some effects from our imperfections that cause remembrance.
Now I’m not advocating living with paralysing regret – there’s no need for that either when there’s a Saviour to forgive and to heal. Just that the statement of having no regrets is pretty dumb. Or to put it more gently, not well thought through. Or poorly informed.
God has dealt with my past regrets by washing me free of the guilt – like water washes away the mud from a little persons play. He’s washed me and dressed me again in His chosen garments. Sometimes I get muddy again and then He just helps me get washed up again.
He’s also given me ways of looking at those things that even free and forgiven from, I still wonder about their effects and yes… I regret. I wish I had represented Him better.
Over the last 5 years God has let me see three specific glimpses of a wider perspective on what I see as healthy, looking it square in the face, but guilt free – regret.
The first.
The first was when He showed me a picture of a child learning to colour in. A baby simply doesn’t have a clue. A toddler has a go but it’s pretty messy. At 4-5-6 they can colour in the lines and later on they can turn out something even more developed. The point is, that at every moment along the way they have done their best in their current level of ability and at no point should they be ashamed as they look back. Every effort is the out working of their best. Can our best grow? Of course. Have we not always given our best? Probably. Yes. But all of it I take to Him with gratitude that I can , gratitude for forgiveness where it’s needed, gratitude that He has helped me grow, and will continue to – for as long as I desire Him to. Which is forever.
Which also recognises that I am not there yet.
The second.
Years ago I had a particular friend who was truly searching spiritually. We lost touch through having completely different lives but I always felt that I had not shared enough in our times together. A few years ago I prayed about this… And about her… And asked that if I could still be of use in her spiritual walk, that God would bring it to pass. I’m at a stage where I don’t always trust me. I can make lots of things happen but to know it’s Him and not my manoeuvring, sometimes I ask Him to do something completely independent of ME. Then I’m sure it’s Him at work. Well, within weeks of praying about that friend I received a handwritten letter in the old fashioned mail from her. Twenty odd years it had been, and she opened up the relationship again. Wow. God has shown me that He can still be at work in the things I’ve regretted. The door is not necessarily closed.
The third.
The third happened this week.
When I went to work in my apprenticeship at 15, I was pretty wide eyed and innocent but secure in myself and very secure in what I believed. In my later teens I was still secure in what I believed but my walk had compromises in it and my life didn’t reflect Him well. I have often regretted that I didn’t maintain that – that my choices became diluted and that these things had an effect on the people I mixed, worked, and was friends with at the time. Some of those people from that time have been close ever since and they’ve seen that time as a short departure from how I always knew He expects those who claim to love Him, to be. But others only saw the departure, and that I regret beyond words. Firstly and above all, I’ve learned to take my regrets to Him. For the purposes of forgiveness. And sanity. And peace. And of seeing what He might do.
I was the youngest of 14 apprentices in a kitchen of 90ish staff. Lots of memorable people. Many that stayed in my mind for many different reasons, one in particular has been always there to the point I can’t imagine not having had her friendship this last 30 years and a handful I’ve prayed for. That handful are the people that there was some sort of spiritual connectedness or openness toward me… and who I felt I most let down. I had long ago repented of my unfaithfulness but I also felt a true and I believe right, level of sorrow that I did not represent my Beautiful, Pure and Holy Saviour well.
This week via Facebook I’ve had a conversation with one of those people. It’s been 27 years!!! Would you believe it, he asked if I was still a Christian, and is now himself, walking with the Lord!!!! To say I am thrilled – cannot touch the level of pleasure and joy I feel for this!!!!
First, because it is simply so.
But also for other me-related reasons.
Did my prayers have something to do with it? Oh I hope so but that’s not my main point. You see, in my regret, I’d forgotten how big God is and that He can do things without me!!!!
My point then is, that God is active all the time. Even across big gaps of time when we can’t see anything AND that it’s always bigger than me and/or my regrets – tho He can use my regrets to hone me to pray and to see and to hear and to recognise Him at work.
And that is how He knocked my socks off just this week.