Opening the door

20 years ago this year, I was a passenger in a serious car crash. The type of car crash that made the news. I remember regaining consciousness in a mass of twisted metal, covered in smashed glass, bricks, concrete and blood. I managed to crawl out, and somehow opened the door to pull my friend Jono out of the seat behind me and onto the ground. He passed away before the ambulances arrived. Jono would have turned 40 this year.

The news shook the small community in Albany and Walpole where he had grown up. There was a huge amount of grief, but also anger, guilt, shame, and regret. I would like to say that this became a turning point to recognise God’s hand on me, to turn away from a slowly self- destructing life. To answer His knock at the door.

It would be another 18 years before I answered that knock. Now that I have, looking back I am now starting to see how and where God continued to love me, bless me, and waited for me, patiently (so patiently). All while I continued to do my thing, never stopping loving, never stopping waiting. What an incredible truth.

Despite this, 20 years to the day I found myself crushed under a waterfall of tears. Sadness, loss, and regret came pouring back, feeling like it was just yesterday. I realised I was still carrying a weight of sorrow and regret towards this particular time of my life. Regret in the decisions I made on that night, regret that I abandoned friends in the years afterwards. Regret that I didn’t answer that knock in that moment.

Why do I still have regrets? What should I do with them?

I found myself questioning this. Surely if I am in Christ, I should have no regrets? I thought I had moved past this chapter of my life? But here I was. Why? What was I being shown?

Jesus tells us in Luke ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ (9:60) In Philippians Paul says ‘Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead’ (3:13-14)

A narrow road and small gate indeed. How easy is it to actually just forget? To not look back? I thought I had done a pretty good job of forgetting, moving on, and burying these regrets. I can see now it’s in how I chose to forget – under my own will, rather than under God’s grace.

In working through these regrets, I found a John Piper teaching on regret that has been really helpful. Perhaps you will too. I have paraphrased some of his points that landed for me, alongside my own footsteps.

My memory can never be decisive, only Jesus can be decisive.

‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jeremiah 17:9). A deceitful heart joined with an imperfect memory – together they recall things as good that weren’t, and things that weren’t good, as good. Pride, fear, shame – are all experts at manipulating my past truths into present lies.

My memory of the past is unreliable. If you ask my wife, that’s a gross understatement. How does my memory of an event now 20 years old and the events immediately following really stack up? What have I selectively retained and selectively forgotten? My memory cannot ever be decisive, only Christ alone is decisive.

Godly regret vs worldly regret

Are my regrets pointing me towards repentance, and/or towards what Jesus has done for me? Towards God’s grace? Or are they leading to shame and fear, making me endlessly pre-occupied with self. Thinking    about what I could have done, should have done on that night? In the weeks that followed?

Piper argues that Paul reminding the Ephesians to remember their time separated from Christ (2:12–13) is a clear example of a healthy remembering of a regretful condition - to a point. That point is where regret transitions to deepen and further solidify our thankfulness for grace.

I feel 2 Corinthians further illustrates this transition. ‘Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret.’ (7:10). Sorrow (regret) with God at the centre leads to reflection on what Jesus has done on the cross. Which leads to renewed life. One outworking of which is peace and forgetting of past events, and of self.

In contrast if I attempt to forget under my own steam, or my regrets are worldly, they will bear no repentance, no life. Slowly becoming a longer- term destination that elicits no re-orientation towards Jesus. They only serve to focus back in on myself.

God works all things together for good.

God works all things together for good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). What a banger.

Looking back on that night one, Jono was insistent on taking the seat that he did. This memory was validated by the other guys in the car in the days that followed. The difference between me being alive today or not was maybe 80cm. The distance between my door, and where Jono’s door took the full impact of a traffic light pole.

One young man, barely out of teens, passed away. Three somehow survived. If you saw the car, we shouldn’t have. In tragedies it can be incredibly hard to see where the good is, or how goodness can ever work out of a circumstance. I will never fully understand the series of events of that night, nor will I try to. How arrogant I have been in the past to make a judgement call on this, to assume I have arrived at the pinnacle of all understanding of everything behind me, and before me (thank you Tim Keller).  

What I can and do assume, is that somehow, all this is being carefully, masterfully, mysteriously crafted together into an infinite fabric of love designed for a far greater good than I will ever be able to fully understand.

Just because I follow Jesus, I am realising it doesn’t mean I’m never going to have another regret. However, because I follow Jesus, I can now change how I view and engage with regret. It will be slow and messy for sure – I’m a 40-year-old toddler who’s still learning to walk. And is great at throwing the toys out of the cot. But I know with a church family around me and the one and only teacher right at my side, sorrow and regret transition into a door opened wide to Jesus, and a journey full of life.

Wherever remembering our failures will help us fly to Christ, love Christ, rest in Christ, cherish grace, sing of mercy, serve with zeal, then let’s get on with remembering and regretting. But wherever remembering begins to paralyse us with the weight of failure and remorse so that we don’t love Christ more, or cherish grace more, or serve with greater energy, then let us forget and press on by the power of grace for the little time we have left - John Piper