Reflection
If Regret Was a River, I Could Have Drowned
Weave your mistakes into something beautiful
If regret was a river, I could drown in it, I thought as I pulled out the yellow, faded pages of my scribbled dreams. All the plans and knowledge of what I was going to do with my life. All the ideas and half created articles and outlines for books.
Tears of shame, regret, and sorrow burned my eyes as I tried to focus on the words I had written more than a dozen years ago. My throat constricted as I attempted to formulate words to explain to my husband how devastated I felt.
I was embarrassed that I was sharing this intensely emotional moment with my husband in the car. He loves me and never judges me, this I know, but it felt like a moment between me and God. I was lit up inside with an understanding of what He had started in me that I had halted. I was overwhelmed with what I was seeing in this file that I had not looked into in more years than I cared to admit to myself.
The File
As part of our downsizing initiative (we had intentions of buying a tiny home) I knew that The File would need to be tackled. I had ignored it from three previous moves — simply carrying it from home to home and stashing it in the back of a closet — for someday…the day I would start writing again.
It was time, that little voice whispered. So I grabbed the file and threw it in the car, intending to sort through it as we drove into the country. I thought I would be sorting through story starters and some writing tips and I knew I might feel some regret but I wasn’t prepared for the emotional onslaught about to take place.
On one piece of paper I had written three ideas for books:
- One Step at a Time or Step by Step or Take the Next Step (some suggested titles): the key to simple obedience is just taking the next right step.
- A book about women pursuing their creative spirit.
- A book about grace…an intensely personal journey I had been on since recovering from church abuse and legalism (and perfectionism, too).
As I sifted through all the tattered papers where I had scribbled these dreams, I began to sob, throat aching, and red-faced, snot-nosed crying.
My husband, confused, kept asking, “What? What did you find? What’s wrong?”
It was hard to put into words. I had recently read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. In this book she shares a story about a novel she had started to write but got distracted from when life got complicated.
A couple of years later she meets best-selling novelist Anne Patchet and they exchange contact information. They begin writing each other letters and Anne tells Liz she’s working on a new novel. They agree to meet up as soon as their traveling schedules allow them time.
As soon as they can meet again in person, Liz tells Anne how she had started a novel but she’d felt like she’d lost the inspiration for it. It had been there: the setting, the characters, the plot, the love story, the conflict…but she got distracted with life and when she returned to it the story felt flat and stale and Liz knew it was no longer hers to tell.
Anne asked Liz to share some details about this story that seemed to have flown from Liz’s grasp and as she does, Anne is blown away, finally saying something like, “You’ve got to be shitting me!”
Liz asks, “What? What do you mean?” And Anne begins to tell her the story she is writing. The setting is the same, the characters, the love story, the conflict. There were a few minor details that were different but in essence it is the same story that Liz had started writing!
Both authors are dumbfounded but not shocked — after all they both believe in Big Magic — that ideas want to be found and that stories want to be told — but this type of coincidence is more than either had ever experienced with creativity before.
As most writers know, our job is to listen and receive a story that wants to be told. When we are distracted with the things of living, too busy to listen, or too afraid to be the conduit through which the message comes, the story goes elsewhere and lands on a willing participant (this is what Gilbert proposes in Big Magic). This theory seems to have been confirmed through the uncanny experience shared by Liz and Anne.
But that’s not all to my story
I wasn’t crying because I didn’t write these books. I was sobbing because I had met who did.
I had found the Hope Writer’s membership about a year earlier and began reading Emily P. Freeman’s books. Something inside me resonated so strongly with her writing. I felt like she was writing me — not writing to me — but writing what was in me.
I devoured her books:
A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live: a book about women pursuing their creative spirits with freedom and faith.
Simply Tuesday: a book about living an ordinary life in extraordinary ways (ahem…my blog is called Simple Life Simple Faith).
The Next Right Thing: her latest book about doing the next right thing…or making decisions based on what God’s next step was for one’s life. My review of this book:
Oh, and she also had written a book called Grace for the Good Girl: a book about grace, obviously.
I have had the words of many writers resonate with me, but never in such a way that it felt like they had reached into my writer’s spirit and pulled the words out in a way that I had been unable to put to paper.
Seeing this shabby, frayed, and yellowed piece of paper with these hastily scribbled ideas for books in my slush pile gave me goosebumps, Godbumps, and a massive amount of regret.
I had missed the boat. The ship sailed without me. I let God down. I failed to follow through on what was being worked inside me. I rebuffed inspiration. I hoarded writing ideas and they had turned to dust and decay. The spirit of inspiration moved on, tired of waiting for me to serve the gift.
I know that it sounds self-absorbed of me to think that I had received the same ideas for books years before Emily P. Freeman had written them. I know how that sounds, but all I can say is it’s true. I had written them down…but I had turned them away.
My life took a turn that consumed my time and pushed creativity out. I made decisions that took me on a course that allowed no room for listening to the whispers of the muse. And now, here I was visiting the old rubble of a past life.
It’s like that house down the road from you, the one whose builder had ambitious plans for and an inspired dream. He started out strong, pouring the foundation and gathering the materials and tools, but then ran out of money or time or enthusiasm for the project; the half-built home now looks lonely and all you can see are abandoned dreams.
Every time you walk by and see the framing for the arched windows and the layout of what would have been the kitchen facing the sunrise, you think: What potential is here! But, as the exposed wood begins to rot under the winter snows and the weeds take back the land, you realize this building will never be what it was supposed to be. Someone will have to come and raze it to its foundation to make something strong and beautiful from the discarded dream.
That’s what I was facing when I looked into my file of faded dreams. Regret flooded me and I refused to push it away.
I felt that it was important to sit with this discomfort until I could put words to it, until I learned what I needed from it. Until I could release it all to God — the giver of my dreams.
In an attempt to comfort me, my husband kept saying, “It’s okay, God will give you new ideas. You can still write those books — in your own voice.”
But I refused to be comforted.
I was aware of the danger of self-pity as a by-product of regret so I made an agreement to not remain in that place too long. Still, I wanted to feel the pain, the way a woman might want to feel the pain of childbirth — to be fully present in it with eyes wide open to all that was happening as she brought new life into the world.
I wanted to walk through the pain, not dart around it or leap over it with spiritual platitudes of “God’s mercies are new every morning.” Or “You are not big or powerful enough to thwart God’s plans.” I knew all that in my head but I wanted to understand the lessons unfolding in my heart.
As bad as it hurt, I wanted to feel how it meant to make choices that put the cares of this world before the promises of God. My file was filled with promises from God and all I had needed to do was follow them like Abraham followed God into a new land.
I had frozen up, I had chosen the sure bet over the uncertainty of walking in faith. And now I was face to face with the consequences of those choices. And I wanted to feel it all.
I wanted to absorb this lesson the universe was showing me so that I would solidify my commitment to serving the gift of writing above all else.
I never wanted to wonder ‘what if?’ again.
As Erma Bombeck once said, I want to die with everything God has given me left on the table, not hidden away in a file in the corner of a closet.
What God gives must be used, to the best of our ability at the time. Maybe I never would have written books that would have been published but what had God wanted to teach me through the process? What glorious experiences did I miss by not pursuing the bread crumb trails He was leaving for me?
Rebuild the foundations from out of your past
Then I also remembered a scripture that God had long ago drawn my eye — one of those verses or sections of the Bible that seem to raise off the page and make you take notice. One that I had known was important but had been confused about its significance for many years.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. (Isaiah 58:12, MSG)
And then I knew that even though I had missed an opportunity to use my gifts for God’s glory, He was not grieved with me; I could mine this pile of dusty old phrases and hastily penned words for bits of gold and then I could recycle the rest and move on.
See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19, NIV)
Lessons inform today’s living
I’d love to go back in time and have some do-overs, but I can’t. So today I’m relentless about only pursuing things that nourish my soul and my relationships and serve others.
I’m also thinking a lot about how God redeems all our past — our actions, even our missteps — and weaves it all together to be used for our good and His glory. I even found a little story I had written about this in my file.
Nothing is ever wasted with God. His economy is not tied to the rules of this world. Time is not a concern for Him. Although I do believe I missed opportunities, callings, gifts, and took a detour through my life, I don’t worry about it too much anymore.
God is neither bound by my mistakes or by the calendar we call out as ticking time. His time is kairos time — times marked by seasons and purpose. I do not know that I’ll ever write those books (or any book) but it’s okay because God’s message found someone who was ready to pen His words and all is as it should be.
And strangely, I am comforted at finding those book ideas and knowing that inspiration had landed elsewhere to bring them to full-term in books that have helped others walk closer to God, live simply and in freedom, and pursue their creative gifts. The comfort I find in all this is that I had heard His voice whispering out these words — I had been an instrument of His — and I could be again.
Still, His calling remains. He does not revoke it, so as long as I am listening I can find the stories that I am meant to be a part of (or sit still long enough until they land on me), those stories I am meant to birth into this world.
Are you called to pursue the promises you may have abandoned along the way? Don’t stay in the river of regret; keep going and let God redeem the time.
What ways have you seen Him weave your mistakes or regrets into something beautiful?
