“Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.”
-2 Corinthians 7:10 (MSG)
A few weeks back, I wrote on the topic of regret. Based on the number of emails I received, “regret” really hits a nerve with a lot of you (click here to view “Breaking Free From Regret”).
Regret is the image we see in the rearview mirror of life; a collage of forgettable faux pas that follow us around like sheep being led to the slaughter, except these sheep never make it to the killing floor. It’s a stain that never seems to go away, like the old Wisk commercial: “Those dirty rings. You try scrubbing them out and soaking them out, but you can still come out with ring around the collar.” Oh, if we could only whisk our regrets away.
God forgets, but we don’t. If I had to choose which of us did the forgetting – God or me – I would choose Him. And that’s the way it works. I sure would like to forget some of my blunders and outright sins. I bet you do, too. But those “rings around our collars” of life can keep us on our toes and leaning into better paths that keep us from going down the same old road.
Consider the road my friend Joe (not his real name) went down, literally and figuratively. Joe, a 60 year old construction industry executive from Nashville, shared a story of regret that happened to him 25 years ago. He awoke one Saturday around 8:30 am in 1996, to the not-so-pleasant sound of his wife’s voice. “Come here and look at this, Joe,” she said. Joe slowly pulled himself from a deep slumber and began wiping the sleep from his eyes and rubbing his head, in an attempt to remove the cobwebs from his previous night out. His wife briskly made her way to the garage, as he followed, trying to keep up with her. Arriving at Joe’s new BMW, parked in the center of the garage, she looked at him, with hands on her hips, and asked, “How do you explain this?”
Bewildered, Joe stared at his car. It was almost unrecognizable. There were multiple cracks in the windshield and huge dents and scratches on every part of the car. It had one flat front tire and one badly damaged rear rim with no rubber left on it. The only part of the car that seemed to come out unscathed was the rear windshield. Fluids dripped on the garage floor from the radiator and oil pan. Dirt, leaves, and grass filled the front grill of Joe’s car, as the extruding creases in the two front quarter-panels displayed a permanent downward bend.
Just seven hours earlier, Joe had lost control of his car on a curve just a quarter of a mile from his house. His car went into a spin, hitting several small pines and stopping him abruptly when he skipped over a shallow ditch, hitting a slightly sloped ten-foot dirt embankment. Shortly after his collision, he was able to get enough traction when he put his car in reverse to get it back onto the blacktop, and headed toward home. Even though the car was totaled, Joe was not hurt, except for some soreness and a large bruise across his chest and abdomen that came from the seatbelt that probably saved his life.
Joe had no recollection of the accident. His only memory of the previous night was saying goodbye to his drinking buddy and starting the engine of his car. As he stared in disbelief at the 4,000 pounds of barely distinguishable German engineering, his five-year-old daughter rounded the corner and bounced into the garage. Her eyes got big and she said, “Daddy, someone wrecked your car.” My friend dropped to his knees right there in the garage and wept uncontrollably for what he said seemed like hours.
As he tells this narrative nearly three decades later, I can hear the remnants of regret lying just beneath the story’s details. While Joe still regrets his sin of that fateful night, he will be the first to tell you that he does not regret the outcome. The last time Joe had a drink was that night he wrecked his car. Not only has he maintained his sobriety, he’s helped others do the same by working in his church’s Celebrate Recovery ministry. He works with men and women who are suffering from addictions that fill their rearview mirrors with regret.
I find it interesting that the only part of Joe’s car that wasn’t damaged, was the rear window. Perhaps it was God’s way of telling him that it’s ok if you can’t forget your regrets – that when you look in your rearview mirror, it’s ok to still see them clearly. Regrets can serve as a reminder of where we don’t want to go again, and how the Lord works for good those things in our lives that aren’t so good, in and of themselves.
It’s a good thing God forgets. It’s a bad thing that we forget that God forgets. God forgives and forgets and wipes our slate clean. This gives us the freedom to move on, albeit sometimes with a limp or a scar or dents to remember our shortcomings by. However, because of what Christ did on the cross for you and me, our limps, scars, and dents are no longer evidence of our mistakes; they are memorials to our victories.
From what regret are you struggling that needs the divine touch of the resurrected Christ? What shame are you living under that you’ve not allowed yourself to rise above because you’ve failed to forgive yourself? No, you’re probably not going to forget it, but that’s ok. That regret you choose to let go of by putting it in the Master’s hands, He will transform into a precision tool for His purpose and your good.
Play to win this week in the game that really counts!
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