My best friend points out I say a lot about wanting to change things from my past. It's a thing that comes up too often when we are talking about how we expected life would go and where it's actually gone. We cannot change the past, but I find myself thinking that way a lot. Unfortunately, it's a foolish way of looking at life, and something I haven't yet broken in myself.
Today, I went for a walk to clear my head. Right down the street from my office is an elementary school I attended in second grade. A major event happened there that was one of the first "traumatic" things I remember happening in my life. While waiting to be picked up after school, I watched my mom and sister in our old Ford Pinto station wagon get hit from behind and pushed forward into a school bus. I remember thinking my mom and sister were going to be seriously hurt or killed. It turned out my sister was thrown forward into the windshield and cracked her head (pre seatbelt laws, I guess), but that was the extent of the injuries, from what I remember. I don't even remember the state of the Pinto following the accident.
On my walk by the school today, I talked with God about my feelings on correcting behaviors from my past and felt led to walk onto the campus to the area where I remember watching the crash. I said to God, "Take me back to that point when I arrive on the sidewalk." As I got closer, a huge portion of my life flashed before my eyes and I realized what I was actually asking. It wasn't the thought of reliving the past forty years that freaked me out. It was realizing, should I retain all my current knowledge and experiences in hopes to "change the past," I am still the same sinner who might still make some of the same mistakes I wish I could influence and change. I realized further, my sin and understanding of life now may lead to additional sins and regrets. I may re-live life even more foolishly, rather than improve on the items I reflect on as tragic mistakes.
Some of my corrections may also impact friends and loved ones I have now. My kids, would they be the two blessings I have now? Would my corrections result in different opportunities for failure and compound my frustrations with my weaknesses and mistakes? Would I look at God's grace and somehow try to take advantage of even more of His forgiveness? Would I be a better Christian, better person, better father, better leader, better husband with the ability to make these changes? Or would I chose other sins and other roads to destruction that would lead me further from God's goodness, to a place of rejection and darkness, more arrogant in my own knowledge and understanding?
I know that mistakes have led to where I am right now. And right now, I recognize my desperate need for God and the plan of salvation he offers through the death of His son, Jesus. So now I need to be content with living in His grace to this point, while hating my sin (past and present), discontinuing my constant thoughts of the past, and work on improving my current path forward to protect the future glory God offers. Instead of living in my DeLorean, hoping to time travel and impact my life positively by changing mistakes, I need to work on proclaiming God where I am now, so I can impact my current needs and those of the people I know and love now. Rather than continue in a life of mediocrity, I need to live a life of light and be changed now by God's grace through those past wrongs, and into the future.
What a weird feeling to sense God's presence today. I will say it felt initially like He said, "Okay, Jeremy. Step onto the sidewalk and I'll return you to forty years ago. But, realize this, my child, the impact will be greater than you know, and your sin will still be present while on earth. You don't know My will and divine plan for you, as it is still being worked out for both My glory and your salvation." It was a scary feeling to realize He is present and working in my life right now through those mistakes, and I'm not recognizing that appropriately. My own sin nature would likely lead me into additional trauma, new sins, further distancing myself from God's will and closer to my sinful self-righteous foolishness.
Knowing God does have a plan He is working out for each of us can be a place of peace. We can hate our sin and continue to turn away from it, while also knowing we are earthly being who have inherited the sins of our fathers back to Adam. But, this plan God is working out because of sin, is filled with grace and mercy we won't fully know until we are in Heaven with Him. Praise the perfect, all-knowing, loving God forever.
Updated with a Bible passage shared by my mom:
“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Romans 7:15-25 ESV
