In the classic 80’s movie, Back to the Future, Marty McFly journeys back in time to fix the mistakes of his dysfunctional family. He succeeds in the nick of time with the help of a nutty professor and a sports-car time machine. In the 1978 film Superman, another hero re-writes history to save his beloved Lois Lane. He flies around the world and spins the earth in the opposite direction. The clock rewinds and tragedy is avoided.
Wouldn’t it be nice to change the past?
Unfortunately, the painful events we endured a decade, a year, or even yesterday, cannot be altered. Neither a DeLorean or flying around the globe at supersonic speeds will help us. Our mistakes aren’t any different—mulligans in life are just not possible.
Mistakes come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. Some are minuscule. We flick them away like a crumb on the counter. Others, are epic, and lead to long-term regret. In the latter case, there are no simple answers.
Indeed. the solution to these checkered events is never found in brooding over them. It’s much like squirming around in quicksand—it only pulls us deeper into the hole. What we need is a strong rope to get us unstuck. But instead, we often receive thread-like one-liners such as “It’s not a big deal,” “Get over it,” or “Don’t worry about it”.
The list below is not a magical formula. But we can lay a solid foundation for relieving our mistakes. These five pillars provide the solid cable we need to free us from the mud that incessantly seeks to bury us.
Pillar #1: Embrace Your Membership
The first pillar to stand upon is to know that we are all human. We all make mistakes—they are inherent to who we are we are. We are all in the same boat. Life’s playing field is leveled. We all can relate to falling short in some way, shape or form. Some of us, like me, probably even have a hilarious blooper reel in heaven with ours mistakes recorded. Whatever the gravity of the mistake, however, we all have felt the terrible sick feeling of missing the mark. This gives everyone a membership card to the most ubiquitous association on earth: The Being Human Club.
Thankfully, from a Christian view, God gives us plenty of other real-life ragamuffins to whom we can relate. The Apostle Peter denied Jesus three times in public, but then became a patriarch of the faith. We also read in an insolent son in Luke 15 who abhorrently takes his father’s inheritance. The story ends with him returning home to an exuberant father who receives him with open arms. As The Book of Romans states, “None is righteous, no, not one.”
Welcome aboard.
Pillar #2: Know that Jesus Wasn’t Blind
I’m thankful Jesus became a human being and understands our weaknesses. Not all mistakes are sins, but all sins are mistakes. Where you have offended God by acting or not acting, Jesus died for whatever you did or didn’t do. Through His death and resurrection, we can carry another, more critical membership card labeled, “Redeemed, Child of God.”
Because of this new affiliation, there is no need to continue torturing ourselves. Jesus already endured the ultimate pain and suffering so we wouldn’t have to. Jesus wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses when He got nailed to a Roman cross. In other words, He had no allusions for the all the past, present, and future sins for that which He was dying.
Get out of perdition and accept forgiveness. Then, forgive yourself.
Pillar #3: Go to School
Third, if we don’t deal with our past mistakes, they will deal with us. That is why it’s paramount to learn how we could have acted differently. Indeed, it is healthy to create space to assess how our past mistakes will inform our future decisions.
In theory, mistake’s tutelage is best learned once, and its classroom attended only in brevity. I am akin, however, to hitting my head repeatedly against the same wall. Only after suffering many bruises do I finally decide to change. I often wonder, “Will I ever graduate the school of hard-knocks?”
Maybe you can relate.
In any case, we can rest in the love of a God who is relentlessly patient with us. No matter how many times we must retake the same course, the Lord will “never leave you nor forsakes you” (Hebrews 3:15).
Pillar #4: Keep Only the Treasure
A fundamental question is, “Who sold us the lie that we need to dwell on our mistakes?” On the contrary, our mental health would greatly benefit from actually neglecting them. This doesn’t mean denying the shameful parts of our story. It only means their negative power doesn’t have the power to keep us stuck. Then, we can choose, on our own timetable, when to give them attention.
This process is analogous to scuba diving for treasure. We swim below to the deteriorating vessel in search of meaningful artifacts. When we dig-up precious relics (fond memories from the past), we can gladly take those with us. But when we find rusted, unusable ones, we are free to leave them behind. In fact, let them decay. If we do, the negative emotional impact of our mistakes will fade over time. There is no point to feeling the weight of a mistake over and over again once we’ve made peace with it.
#5 Focus on the Road Ahead
The future doesn’t change the past but it trumps it. What lies ahead is most important. If your imagination only paints a bleak picture in your mind from your mistakes, get a new canvas. Let the brushstrokes of hope create a more colorful artwork of what is to come.
Think about it: Life seen as a marathon is challenging enough to run even forwards. But people who get stuck in the past have the added burden of running the same endurance race backward. It’s counterproductive to move in one direction while looking in another. Turn around. Potholes are much easier to avoid when we focus on what is ahead.
Conclusion
Even though we can’t change our past with a time machine or superpowers, we needn’t discourage. Why? In our human state of constant repair, we have One who has already fixed our most important problems. So we can learn from our mistakes, look to the future, and walk in the freedom of His forgiveness.
