Processing Regrets
What was my role? Who do I need to talk to?
I used to be annoyed about the word sin.
My formative years were outside of any church. I was taught, and totally embraced, the idea that church and religion were for sissies. I thought, not just that they were unnecessary, but that they impeded correct and healthy human development. These personal beliefs didn’t instantly go away when I heard the gospel for the first time. I thought way back then that religion was still something very personal. No need to mess up a good thing by spending anymore time with religious people than necessary. Which goes to show at least to myself that transformation of character is more or less (but mostly more) of a slow drip process than I thought it would be. Conversion didn’t instantly remove my pride or temper.
Eventually, I came to learn, and then embrace, the reality that my original birth was less than perfect, that, in fact, I had inherited from my original ancestors, a big sin problem. There it was, and had always been, a selfishness so deadly that, left untreated, unaddressed, would at some future time place me where I belonged, in a lake of fire.
My point is that it doesn’t matter if we believe in God or not, we all stumble through life wracking up regrets. That’s where I left off yesterday. And since then I have pondered how best to talk about regret recovery with people of all backgrounds, not just those with religious insider knowledge.
The answer, at least to me, is obvious, and I think I have dropped a few hints as to how I at least would try to answer this.
To me, the key word is recovery. Whether or not you believe in the concept of sin I think we all come to understand personal failure and resulting un-erasable regrets. It’s all the same real problem regardless the words used to describe it.
For me, recovery is linked to twelve individual sequential steps — steps known to people who have been in rehab but not generally known or appreciated for the freedom they can bring ordinary folks, including those, believe it or not who go to church. Permit me to describe them to you using my own words.
The first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.
The second step is to look for help outside yourself.
The third step is to work to turn your problems over to the God of your understanding. In other words you don’t have to wait and learn more about what others think about God, you need to do the best you can right now.
Step four is to seriously look at your life rather than just reacting to problems as they explode around you.
Step five is to share your step four findings with another person which also involves taking ownership for the problems and admitting them to God, again, as you best understand him.
Step six is to be willing to have your defects of character removed by God. This is an acknowledgment that many of our character defects are not resolved on purpose, because we find they are useful to us in some or many ways.
Step seven is to humbly ask God to remove these defects of character.
Steps eight and nine have to do with making amends to others when it is possible and safe for them that we do so.
Steps ten through twelve are maintenance steps to continue to help us grow daily into better healthier people.
In Conclusion
To effectively remove guilt, regret, and shame require a commitment to doing difficult and important actions and to do them with the help of others who are seeking recovery of a similar nature for themselves.
As a solution for cleaning up a past life of regrets, taking the twelve steps of recovery is a far cry from simply slapping one’s self on the wrist.
