Uncovering Peace in a Life Built on Regrets

As a child, I wasn’t a fan of school.  It wasn’t something I was naturally good at, and as a result, it was tedious…especially math.  The irony that I ended up as a high school teacher with a classroom full of students who are also not fans of school is not lost on me!

Although most classes weren’t terribly attractive, I did have an interest in studying ancient civilizations.  What fifth grader’s imagination isn’t set wild with stories of Pharoah’s curse, Greek warriors, and mysteries of lost cities?  For a while, I even wanted to be an archaeologist, and I read everything I could get my hands on related to the ancient world.  

Although I did not become an archaeologist, I have had the good fortune and pleasure of traveling to places where ancient civilizations have been unburied by those who have my fifth-grade dream job.  And what you see in those lands is that as one civilization gives way to another, the new things are built on the rubble of the old things, and the excavation process often goes deep into the earth in order to unbury the ruins of multiple foundations of cities built by people long forgotten.  It’s exactly what Solomon discusses in Ecclesiastes when he says that one generation builds and the next generation comes and tears down what was built in order to build something new.  

For instance, I live in a place that was once part of the great Roman Empire.  When Rome fell, all of the monuments and great buildings were simply torn apart for building materials as Europe fell into little more than clan warfare, each group grabbing what land and materials they could in the vacuum of power that was left after the fall. Here and there, you’ll find markers of Rome - a gate, a wall, or a broken statue, but for the most part, the once proud empire is buried in the dirt beneath modern cities.

Now, you might be wondering, What does any of this have to do with living with regret?  It’s a valid question.  In a Bible class with some ladies at school, we are studying prayer.  As part of the study, one of the ladies recommended a book by Tyler Staton, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools.  As a disclaimer, let me say that there is a fair amount of content with which I disagree, but in one chapter, he discusses praying for forgiveness of sin, and he likens discovering our sins to an archeological dig. 

That got me thinking about myself as a spiritual excavation.  One self built on the rubble of an old one.  Each version of myself, in some ways, new and independent, yes, but also foundationally built on the old. Unlike the forgotten civilizations underneath those old cities, my old selves are not forgotten to me…all those versions of myself, although dead in some ways, are also very much alive inside my head.  

I was a disaster.  I would say “in my youth”, but I don’t know where that description finds its end.  My teens, twenties, even early thirties were spent completely and totally in a self-absorbed fascination with the world.  I wasted so much time and so many opportunities because I was just too full of myself to think that anyone, God included, could know more or do better than I could do for myself.  I did what I wanted, said what I wanted, went where I wanted…it was all about me. I look back now, and honestly, that person makes me sick to my stomach.  But that was me, at my foundational level…under all the other rebuilds…that’s who I am.  Worse than useless, I think I probably did damage to the kingdom.  And I can’t undo it.

I also made decisions that have impacted the rest of my adult life and the life of my son.  Even with the next level of building, some of those old structures find their place in the new level.  We don’t get to leave everything behind and start over with a clean slate.  

David is a character who, for many, is hard to justify “as a man after God’s own heart.”  I mean, come on, he’s a liar, an adulterer, maybe a rapist, depending on how we read the story of Bethsheba, and a murderer.  How can a man like that be one who God considers as like Him in heart?  It’s a tough one, and I don’t pretend to have a definitive answer.  But what we see in David is a constant desire to rebuild.  In his psalms, we are able to see a soul who lays himself bare to God.  David prays that God would search him and find his sins.  He asks God to break his bones and cleanse his marrow.  He says that excavating the sin from his life is going to be painful - it’s embarrassing to have our shortcomings on display.  However, David says that he can find joy and peace in the breaking of his bones because the pain brings us back into a right relationship with God.  And THAT is the only place that peace exists.  Do you want to be able to face your own disastrous decisions and still somehow have peace?  Then the first thing we have to do is own up to what we’ve done…who we’ve been.  

We have to dig down into the sin that has been a part of our lives in order to deal with it.  If we simply cover it up, then our transformation is incomplete.  How can we really transform if we never acknowledge who we are at our core?  We have to break ourselves open - and it’s humiliating and painful…and often sad.  But how can we expect to find joy in our new freedom if we never take responsibility for the mess we’ve made of things? 

I know a little something about this, too. I covered up for years, masquerading as something new, something useful, but not really transformed.  It wasn’t until I became a mother that I realized how hypocritical I was.  I can’t tell you exactly what happened, but there was a shift in perspective.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to fool my son, and of course, I knew that I had never fooled God. I would either have to get myself together or drop the act entirely. When you start to rebuild, it’s not easy. Not only do we deal with guilt and remorse, but there’s often pushback from those around us who don’t like the new city. My newness brought strife and contention into my own home, but I knew it was worth it. So I just kept going, struggling to relearn God - His law, His character, His nature.

In order for the new to emerge, the old has to be buried, to the best of our ability.  Like David, we have to lay ourselves bare before God - not for His benefit, He already knows us.  I needed to name my sins, without sugar-coating them.  We have to be brutal.  This is the radical surgery Jesus mentions in the Sermon on the Mount.  Cutting off our hand or poking out our eye is better than disregarding or underplaying our sins.

It’s not a quick process either, and the exhaustion of dealing with our lives and our choices can leave us discouraged.  If we aren’t careful, our old sins can become our justifications to stop building. “I’ve messed up so badly that God can’t use me” is just a tempting excuse to get out of doing the hard work.  In fact, sometimes I think the disasters of my life have been the things that have made me useful.  Look at the Biblical examples we have of disastrously flawed people who allowed themselves to be used - Judah, Samson, and Jonah come immediately to mind. Jesus’s own chosen 12 argue about greatness and abandon Him at the cross.  I’m guessing they weren’t proud of themselves. But they didn’t stop; they stayed and did the difficult task of transforming, and so must we. 

You have regrets? Yep, me, too. Have you made a mess of things and damaged others with your words or actions?  Same.  Are you embarrassed to see some people because they only knew that old buried version of you but they don’t know you’ve changed?  I understand.  

While we remember, God forgets…incredible!  He forgives, forgets, and finds use for us if we let Him.  Our issue isn’t that God can’t get past our mistakes; our issue is that we can’t get past them…especially if we are living with the consequence of them.  We just keep walking around in the old abandoned city - visiting the ruins of our old selves and wondering how we will ever climb to the surface.  Paul would know a thing or two about regrets, but he says that he presses forward, letting go of the things that are in the past.  That must include sins and successes, for while we cannot allow ourselves to be held hostage by our past, we can’t rest on our laurels either.

The gospel’s good news is that we don’t have to live in the buried city. We don’t even have to visit it or look at it.  We can live above ground, not trapped by the rubble of our old lives. Leaving the old man behind - putting on the new man.  The shackles of sin are broken…think of all the imagery that deals with rebuilding - transformation!

The foundation of our old selves may be below us…behind us…but we just need to leave it there.  There’s no room for looking back.  We should learn what we can,  let it breed mercy and patience and compassion and kindness in us, and THEN we will have peace…real peace…not because our lives are perfect or we’ve gotten it all figured out but because we will find a way to be useful to God, and in our relationship with Him, we will find peace. 

I can’t fix the things I did or said.  I can apologize, but they are still there.  I hurt who I hurt, and the damage I did is done.  I have to own it.  I can’t blame it on anyone else.  That’s my ancient city of which I was the architect.  I’m grateful that it's buried, that I don’t live there anymore.  I try not to visit it too often unless it’s useful as a reminder of who I am without God. Some of those previous decisions are still part of the current landscape, but I’m trying to deal with them, seeing them as lessons and opportunities to renovate, understanding that the new city is never truly finished.

I used to think that when I got older, spiritual maturity would come and the transformation would be complete.  Now that I’m 60…which I think qualifies as older…I see how ridiculous that idea was.  I like to think I’m somewhat spiritually mature, and with the perspective of age, I see the long-game of the transformative process.  I’m hoping that at 80, if I’m still alive, that I’ll have a whole new layer of building and that my current self will be just another buried ruin, not forgotten, but only a foundation for someone closer to God, better able to love others, still working in the kingdom, and at peace…not only with all the old versions of self, but more importantly, at peace with my God.