Blank pages and full thoughts

My mind full of yesterday

A scribbled mass of ideas

Crossed out words

Doodles and erasures

But the page before me is blank

Peaceful

No mistakes mar its creamy surface

Yet

Regret pulls at me

While fear pushes its way in

Until I am caught in the middle

Anxious and immobile

Change seems just out of reach

The world moves on

But I am frozen

Midstep

A word spoken

Another unspoken

An action taken

Another not taken

Missed opportunities

Regret takes many forms

I can’t ever seem to get it right

Not even for a day, an hour

Regret a constant companion

An unwelcome visitor

Is it possible to live without regret?

It is not possible to live without mistakes

I think that has been well established by now

But those who say they live without regrets

Seem to mostly mean they ignore the harm they cause in the world

For the Christian

Repentance is the healthier alternative to regret

We acknowledge the wrong, ask for forgiveness, and move on

But it is the moving on part that I find so hard

Not for others- forgiving others is so much easier

Forgiving myself nearly impossible

My mind replays moments I wish I could do again

Endlessly

Even years after the fact

Even relatively small things

Things perhaps no one else but me even noticed

The older I get the more regret seems to hold me in place

Imprisoned in its inescapable web

My pen hovers over the blank page

Afraid now to make a mark

To mar its surface with something

I might later regret

And I wonder if perhaps fear

Is the same thing as regret

We just get ahead of ourselves

And regret that which has not even yet come to be

That which might not ever come to be

For the Christian

Faith is the healthy alternative to fear

We acknowledge that God is God, that we are not, and we choose to trust Him

He has proven himself worthy of trust

Over and over

In faith we hand over the pen

Allowing him to write our futures

His plot twists are ones I never see coming

And his endings are always so much better than mine

I find it easier to surrender the future than I do the past

Which is odd since there is even less I can do to change the past

But in dwelling on the past

I let it control my future

If He can be trusted to write my future

Can’t He also be trusted to rewrite my past?

Lord, help me surrender

Learning from the past without being held captive by it

Choosing worship over worry

Faith over fear

And repentance over regret

Help me not become entangled in the web of the past

Cut the cords that bind

So I can walk today in freedom