From Regret to Redemption and The Road Between
The road from Regret to Redemption winds and dips, then rises to reveal hard-won vistas, like the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon.
The Road Between Regret and Redemption
You don’t start at the bottom.
Like the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon, the trail head is at the top. You’re up there, exhilarated at the sight of one of nature’s most awe-inspiring wonders. Staggeringly beautiful. Unbearably amazing.
Lump-in-the-throat incredible.
You don’t realize what you have, until you start down the trail and wind and twist and brace yourself then climb again and see another enticing horizon pulling you onward and the road flattens only to drop abruptly.
Then you reach the river. The flowing, splashing, roiling white water river.
Yet around the bend, oozing into a crevice, a sandy beach, with clear and serene pools.
That’s the Road from Regret to Redemption.
You start at the top of your game. Confident. Content. In control.
Then you step onto the trail of real life
and bump into the Bright Angel that leads you down, down to a deep dark canyon of despair.
Deny. Swear. Yell.
The cock will crow. Dreaded day will break. The maid will recognize you.
And regret rolls in like a hurricane wave knocking at the pylons of your perceptions.
Like Peter, you weep bitterly, despairingly, with knowing realization
you have reached a bottom you never knew was there.
Hide. Hulk in the shadows…
Watch Pilate wash his hands and feel the blood dripping from crowns of thorns…
Taste the bile rising from hammer blows on nails…
then…
Rejoin the disciples. Follow the grief to the garden
Bewildered. Confused.
Stay with the crowd on the road to Emmaus.
The path with no map lines or markers.
The light will dawn.
Resurrection. Proof of the nails. Ascension.
It’s all there
on the road to Redemption.
What is your deepest regret?
It’s impossible to understand the full impact mistakes make on our lives. So regret plays the purpose of a roundabout. Regretful feelings have value because there’s choices to make; different attitudes to reject or acquire.
It’s not a person’s mistakes which define them – it’s the way they make amends.
Freya North
Don’t stay on the roundabout. Choose to make amends. Apologize. Confess. Rebuild broken relationships. Do what it takes to find redemption and peace of mind. Even if it involves humiliation and awkwardness.
A moment of awkwardness is so much better than a lifetime of regret.
Ruth Soukup
It’s impossible to live completely free of regrets. No life is perfect here on earth, but we can take courage from the words of Paul. Words that Jesus would endorse as a concept for happiness:
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.
Philippians 3:13
