I remember when I was a lot younger thinking it would be a great goal to live without regret. It sounds so powerful and worthy and, well, totally unrealistic.
I realized this yesterday when The B99 asked me what I wanted for my birthday and my eyes started leaking. It totally took me by surprise. I tried to keep them closed long enough for the rising tide of tears to recede, but Wendy is way too smart for that.
“Are you crying?”
Well, duh.
“Why are you crying?”
See how smart she is? Don’t play 21 Questions with her because it only took her two questions to get to my heart. My answer was basically something like more time, more chances to try things again and do them better.
It’s not something the 20-something Paul would have said, but I haven’t been that Paul for, well, awhile now. The current version of Paul understands that regret is normal. It’s also freaking hard to process because it makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry, unless we can learn to take that regret and use it to regrit.
I’m pretty sure I made that word up, but don’t let that throw you. Here’s what it means to regrit: take the lessons you’ve learned from the areas and situations that you regret and get back in the game!
Did you make mistakes as a parent? You can live your life looking back with regret over things you can no longer change, or you can find the courage and strength — the grit you once had — and apply the lessons you’ve learned to current relationships. Regrit can transform not-the-best parents into rock star, legacy-building grandparents.
Did the business you started crash during the pandemic? That’s a sack of regret that would weigh anybody down, but I bet there are strategies that you can take from that experience and apply them forward. Find the grit you had when you launched that thing, combine it with what the regret is teaching you, and regrit yourself off the mat.
As a side note, I’m currently regretting the choice to use a made up word like regrit because I’m staring at a computer screen and seeing a lot of red squiggly lines because my spellchecker is trying to tell me something. But I digress. Now, let’s turn that regret into regrit and finish this post.
Regret paralyzes us by defining our present and future by our past. We aren’t now nor ever will be better than our worst days and worst decisions. That, my friend, is a lie because it doesn’t mesh with who God is.
[Tweet “Regret paralyzes us by defining our present and future by our past.”]There’s a story in the Bible about a really bad parent named Eli. We won’t take the time to tell the whole story here, but you can read about it in the first few chapters of 1 Samuel. What I love about the story is that when God wanted to raise up Samuel as the first prophet to be used to speak His words to His people, He chose Eli as the one who would raise him.
God gave Eli the chance to take his past regrets and regrit them into present and future success. He still does that today, so take those regrets and turn them into a word with a red squiggly line under it and get back in the game.
