When we started this thing almost thirty years ago I was dragging around a bag full of regret and pain. I had no idea what life was like without it strapped onto my back. It came with me everywhere I went. It was full of what I wish I hadn't done & what I could have done better.....I thought it was how life was supposed to be.
I said 'I'm sorry' so many times a day I couldn't have collected them all. I was sorry for just about everything under the sun, passing around apologies hoping to relieve a bit of the guilt that was piled up within. I didn't know it wasn't mine to hold onto.
It wasn't until I began living free in the arms of God's grace that I was able to shed responsibilities I never was meant to own.
We don't have time to pick up what was never intended for us to haul around. Our lives have a purpose far more impactful than bathing in regretfulness.
As we drive down the road today headed toward all God has laid before us I can openly say-I'm not lugging around regret.
How did I get here from there?
Well I must say there's been a lot of letting go mixed in with a whole lot of receiving of the goodness of God.
I remember the day like it was yesterday when I was sitting one leg tucked under another while my other leg was swung over the arm of the overstuffed chair in my son's bedroom. We were opening up our hearts that day letting our wounds kind of spill out when the words seemed to be building up ever so much. They were dammed up in the center of my chest as I was trying to make sense of them all in my head before I let them gush forth. Finally when I couldn't hold them back any longer I spoke aloud...'You know for far too long I expected perfection when I should have taught you to live in the rhythms of God's grace...I'm sorry bud, I didn't know but now I'm learning it myself. You see God doesn't work with equations. It's not the 'if...then' I've been preaching to you all these years. You see God is so much deeper than that. He cares about the inner beating of our heart more than our outward actions. I know we've read this in His word a million times but somehow between reading it and believing it- it got complicated. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm still learning this thing so I'm sorry if I've somehow scrambled up His sweet message of grace.'
And you know what happened when I let this wild thing spew out of my lungs it somehow began flooding my life with some of His deep soul healing. Somehow the truth God intended to set me free with got spun into a tangled mess of lies when in God there's no room for regret.
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.....”
2 Corinthians 7:10
Now we're driving down this road twenty some years later looking through the window ahead not feeling the need to glance in the mirror of regret. God's removed the urge to spend my days glancing at the past -He keeps directing my eyes to what lays ahead.
When we choose to let Him have and heal our brokenness we live life in a w-holy place.
So sweet Mommas as fast as transition seems to be coming down our roads choose not to live them smothered in regret but live them free in the grace He has for us.
We can get further & further down the road full of regret and miss what He designed for us.
Our road ahead will be just as dear as the one we've traveled. The memories we've made so far will get sifted through grace and will all be made perfectly beautiful in His time....living backwards from today will never get us to the blessings of tomorrow.
So if you're like me leaving the days with your arms full of kids or you're right in the middle of the crazy of it all- stay in the moment and risk all you have to do the something bigger He's calling you to. And in the process we will all get a little closer to Jesus!
