The Land of Regret
When my daughter was 3, her pet Beta fish, Kuzco (named after the llama in Emperor’s New Groove), suddenly stopped swimming. Days went by without him showing any signs of his usual active lifestyle. He wasn’t belly-up, but really, the guy hadn’t moved in nearly a week. I decided to call the time of death and break the news to my kid. Given that it was her first real experience with death, she handled it surprisingly well. We decided we’d go and purchase a new fish before saying our goodbyes to Kuzco, to make the transition more seamless. We came home from the pet store with the new fish, (Ted, because he was red, and it rhymed), ready and waiting in his plastic cup. My daughter waited in the kitchen while I walked Kuzco to the bathroom to flush him. I fished the little guy out of his tank and dropped him in the toilet. Low and behold he started to swim.
“WHAT?!” I shrieked.
“What’s wrong Mommy?” my daughter called from the kitchen.
“Nothing sweetie! Stay there!” I said, panicking.
You can’t place two Beta fish together in a tank, so I couldn’t keep them both. I had to make a decision, fast. My daughter was already so excited about Ted and I really didn’t want to drive all the way back to the pet store to return him. So, I did what I had to. I whispered a quick prayer, “Lord forgive me,” closed my eyes, and flushed. My daughter is almost 9 now and she still doesn’t know the truth. Some things are better left buried, or, in this case, flushed. We’re on our fourth Beta fish now, and you’ll be glad to know I do a thorough autopsy on each fish before I send them down the porcelain express. I think of Kuzco often, (usually when I clean that toilet in our bathroom), and I pray his fate was like that of Disney’s Nemo, and not something more horrific. Motherhood is filled with mistakes and regret. The murder of Kuzco makes my top ten list for sure.
What’s your greatest regret? We all have at least one. You probably didn’t have to think too long before it came right to you. Maybe that poor choice, that failed attempt, that lost relationship, plays on repeat in your mind so much you have every detail of it memorized, so much so that the slightest trigger causes you to relive it all over again. Living in the Land of Regret is so defeating. All we want to do there is look back and give up. I am a former resident of the Land of Regret. I owned prime real estate there for years. I built a mansion, in fact. Each room held a past mistake, a failure, a burned bridge. My failure to finish college- that got the biggest room in the house. Quitting piano lessons after 12 years. Not pursuing my softball career after high school. Never learning how to properly budget money until I’d buried myself under a mountain of debt. The habitual lies I told friends and family my entire life were to gain attention or save face. Room after room after room. The shame and embarrassment I felt over those regrets kept me from being authentic with just about anyone. They kept me from looking forward. They kept me from learning from my past and choosing a better future. Most importantly, they kept me from forgiveness- accepting God’s forgiveness and forgiving myself.
For those of you living in the Land of Regret, I have good news. We may remember our past in glaring detail, but God doesn’t. Psalm 103 tells us, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve….For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love….as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” He has removed our transgressions from us. So why do we hold them against ourselves, living in guilt and shame? When we come to God and say, “Ugh, remember that time? I can’t seem to shake it,” His response is, “What time? What are you even talking about?” I find that so FREEING, don’t you? It’s time to let go. It’s time to move out of the house you’ve built for yourself in the Land of Regret. That place is not your home.
My children are currently obsessed with the Disney movies, “The Incredibles,” and “The Incredibles 2.” I don’t complain because, truly, there are far worse things to watch on repeat. (I’m looking at you, “Trolls World Tour.”) My favorite character from the movies is an eccentric fashion designer named Edna Mode. “I never look back darling, it only distracts from the now,” she says. I’ve adopted this line as my mantra whenever I catch myself looking back in regret. Regret is so distracting. We miss so much when our heads are turned to reflect on the mistakes of our past. We get so focused on all the things we haven’t done right that we can’t hear God’s voice telling us we are loved and we are enough, for who we are today. I mentioned one of my regrets is quitting piano lessons. Just this week I sat down to my piano. It had been years. My 5-year-old son is learning about Beethoven in kindergarten and I wanted to play him some of Beethoven’s music when he got home from school. My music reading skills were rusty, and my piano was out of tune, but I practiced all morning. When I played “Moonlight Sonata” and “Fur Elise” for my son that afternoon, he cheered, “I know those songs now! Mommy this makes my heart so happy!” It made me happy too. We can’t change what we’ve done, but we can change what we do. Start by fixing your eyes on what’s ahead. I guarantee it’s better than what’s behind.
Think about Lot’s wife, in the book of Genesis. God sent His angels to save her family from wrath and destruction. He helped them flee to safety as fire and sulfur rained down on their city. The one direction they were given was to keep running and don’t look back, (Genesis 19:17). And yet, Lot’s wife turned. Maybe she looked back just to catch a glimpse of God in action. Maybe she looked back in concern for her home, her possessions, and her neighbors. Or just maybe, she looked back in regret. Her decision to turn her head and look behind her, instead of moving forward, ended her life. “But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt,” (Genesis 19:26). She now stands as a permanent fixture in the Land of Regret. To move forward, we have to leave behind the life that is holding us back. The city where Lot and his family dwelled was filled with sin that grieved the heart of God. There was nothing good left for them there. He pulled them out and away for good reason. God had something far better in store for them, but they had to run forward to see it.
This isn’t to say we can’t learn from our past. Of course, we can, and we should. But there’s a difference between learning from our past and regretting it. “The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done, we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change. So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt, fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding, and love,” -Jennifer Edwards. The thing about regret is, that it means wishing it never happened. It’s easy to believe our lives would be better if we hadn’t messed up so much in our past. But would it really? Think about all the things we know now that we didn’t before, because of our past (even if it’s just a long list of what not to do). If we stop looking back long enough to see what’s in front of us, we’ll realize we’re already seeing the present with wiser, more enlightened eyes.
Once I got past my shame and embarrassment over my failures, I was able to share my story with others. It turns out, I’m not the only one who has messed up. There are neighbors all around us in the Land of Regret. We just need someone who has already moved out to help show us the way. I’m so grateful I can be that someone now. I’m so grateful God doesn’t waste our mistakes. He has a plan and purpose for them. My past is not unlike yours. It’s littered with sin and mistakes. But the grace of God is big enough and strong enough to cover my sin and absorb my shame. I am not meant to dwell there, in that Land of Regret. I am meant to run away and never look back. I am meant to tell my story, not in shame, but in the declaration of His saving grace. Psalm 40 says, “The Lord lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God” Let your song of shame change to one of praise. Let your testimony change from, “You’ll never believe what I’ve done,” to “You’ll never believe what God has done.”
“Forget the former things, do no dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland,” (Isaiah 43:18-19).