Living with Regret

 

    This post is going to be very personal and might also hit home for some people. Regret is something that everyone faces in some way. For some, it involves really big, life-changing decisions. While I would love to tackle those as well, I want to reach out to the people who are super critical of themselves—those who think that the slightest mistake they made is a huge deal. For example, someone who answered a question from a teacher incorrectly in class might think to themselves that they SHOULD HAVE known the answer and continue to beat themselves up about it. This is me. I would think like this all the time over everything. I wish I could say that it stops, but for some of us, it doesn't. For most of us, it is a constant battle that we must face IMMEDIATELY when we wake up. Regret is a very tough road to navigate, but together we can figure out how to live with it.

      Firstly, I want to separate "regret" into two different categories. The first category is regret from poor decisions, and the latter from sinful decisions. You might be thinking to yourself, "Are they not one and the same?" The answer is not quite, and here is why: while a sinful decision IS ALWAYS a poor one, a poor decision is NOT ALWAYS a sinful decision. For example, you can either eat cake for breakfast or eat cereal; one is a poor decision yet is not sinful. Here is a practical one that maybe we have faced: choosing to do a certain degree path and then regretting it later on. See how it is not sinful but yet is one we think is now "poor" and regretful? Why does it matter that they are different? It matters because they both require two different responses. In this post, I necessarily want to focus on regret from a poor decision and not a sinful decision, because that will be saved for another time.

    

    It is very difficult to overcome regret from a decision that we now deem as "poor." When we make a decision and look back, thinking to ourselves, "That was not the best decision I could have made," we tend to beat ourselves up over and over, thinking that we should have known better. The only one who knew what the outcome of our poor decision would be was God. This is what makes us HUMAN. We do not know the outcome of our decisions, and that is okay. We can think in our minds, "I should have____" or "Maybe if I did _____" or "If only I would have _____." The list can go on and on. These are DANGEROUS thoughts at times because they can send us spiraling down a path of "what ifs." How do we overcome all of this?

  

 "Our lives  are always moving  in the direction  of our strongest thoughts."
- Pastor Craig Groeschel

    I love this quote by Pastor Craig because it is so true. If we want to overcome this, then we need to take our thoughts captive. This is evident in the Word of God through what Paul writes to the church in Philippi.

 

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." 
- Philippians 4:8

 

 

   

    Let me help you out... the answer to living with regret is that you are NOT supposed to live with it. You are supposed to hand it over into God's hands. This is extremely hard at times, whether it is because we lack faith or, if you are like me, you lack grace for yourself. As mentioned before, I tend to beat myself up a lot over it. I hold onto it because I am the one who made the poor decision, and it is my burden to bear. I have to stop myself and reflect on Romans 8:28,

 

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

   

 

    When we believe in this and recognize the authority that God has given us, we can speak life by saying, "Yes, that probably was not the best decision I could have made, but what's happened, happened, and God has ordered my steps, turning all things around for good on my behalf." Everything happens in our lives for a reason. You see, the "poor" decisions we have made in our lives are nothing but LESSONS to be learned by us or a warning to someone else.

   

    Pick yourself up, keep going, and remember the lesson you learned. Who knows, maybe you'll, “buy that $3 rose because it goes a long way and dance with someone if you know they look beautiful.” That might just be my lesson from 2021. The biggest regret. Figure out your lesson and apply it to your life!