Faith in Regret

My friend Amy, who has been counseling me through the hospice and the grieving process, advised me to process my regret.  So, although I didn't want to go there, I made myself sit down today and write a letter to my dad, expressing the dark sadness on my heart.  I wrote pages, retelling and reliving the past two weeks, and the moments I feared to remember, the moments that have already begun to keep me from sleeping peacefully.  I cried ugly tears as I wrote, wearing my grief and regret like sackcloth and ashes.

I wasn't sure what the writing was supposed to accomplish.  Logically, I know there's no point to regret.  I can't go back, can't change anything.  Even if I could, it doesn't mean I could save my dad.  I know that.  But regret isn't logical.  Once I'm done writing down my regrets, what is the answer to them?

Before I was finished writing, I forced myself to take a break and went on a walk with my friend Shannon.  She expressed that she wished she had that magic answer to free me from those feelings.  In truth, there is none.  Regret is not something that has a one-time, quick fix.  We both know that.  But what Shannon didn't realize, nor did I until I had time to reflect on our conversation, is that she did help me come to the answer to regret.  In fact, it's the only answer to everything that holds us captive.  It's such an all-encompasing answer that it sounds trite and powerless unless you really understand by experience what it means.

The thing that the conversation with Shannon helped me reflect on was how regret can ruin a person.  We both shared about people we had known who lived and died under regret from the loss of a loved one.  We both know of people who have worn regret, like sackcloth and ashes, throughout the rest of their lives.  When confronted or encouraged to let it go, they actually expressed that they didn't want to.  Regret is comfortable in a twisted way.  It helps us feel that in some way we are, with our suffering, making up for what we missed or can never undo.  I was reflecting on this part of our conversation, talking in my mind to God about how I didn't want my regret to own me like that. That's when God brought to mind the word: Surrender. What is the one thing that those people we knew were unwilling to do?  Surrender their regret.

God is a gentleman.  He won't take from us something within ourselves that we are unwilling to give.  I can't tell you how many times in my walk of faith I have had to learn the word Surrender, so many times that it should be obvious, but it probably never will be.  To keep regret from owning me, I must surrender it to God, open palms.  The writing of it, the speaking of it, the processing it, is one thing, but if I write, speak, process, yet don't surrender, I still own it.  Once again, my heart lets go of something unhealthy, and God takes my surrender and gives me a new word: Freedom.

With that word, God brings to mind the cross, where Jesus died, not just for my sin, but to set me free.  Through the cross, through my surrender at the foot of the cross, I am free from sin, free from guilt, free from slavery, free from regret, free from despair.  And that is the simple, obvious, amazingly complex and profound truth that is the answer to my regret: it must be nailed to the cross.  Like everything else that I have ever had to surrender to God, my regret must be surrendered, nailed to the cross, to die to me that I might receive the freedom that is mine in that same cross.  And in that surrender, I make the bold claim that my God is more powerful than my regret, just as He is more powerful than my sin.  He has the power to free me from my sin, from my sackcloth and ashes, to live a life full of joy and peace in Him, a life full of joy and peace even in the midst of loss and suffering.

This is real.  This is bare-bones, faith-in-action, rubber-meets-the-road Truth and there is nothing trite about it.  Surrendered at the cross, there is nothing that God can't redeem.  There is not a one-time fix to regret, in the sense that I will have to surrender my regret as often as it occurs in my heart.  But there is a one-time fix for everything in the cross.  All it takes to reach the freedom found there, is surrender.  He makes all things new.

This song spoke to me a few days ago, and I believe it applies perfectly here:

Beautiful Things by Gungor

All this pain

I wonder if I'll ever find my way

I wonder if my life could really change at all

All this earth

Could all that is lost ever be found

Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of us

All around

Hope is springing up from this old ground

Out of chaos life is being found in You

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of the dust

You make beautiful things

You make beautiful things out of us

You make me new, You are making me new

You make me new, You are making me new

You are making me new