I Wish I Could Start Over

The next in our breakthroughs in our journey back to God we call the awakening to regret. You look at your life one morning and realize that, for all your best efforts, you’ve made a mess of things. You’re filled with disappointment and remorse. And now that you see things more clearly, you’d love another chance. But you’re not sure you have it coming.

Come to think of it, why would you?

But stay with us.

Inside each of us is the conviction that we came from goodness and love and that we’re made for more of it. When we hit bottom and realize what a mess we have made of this life, and what a mess life has made of us, our reaction is to say, “I wish I could start over.”

The beautiful thing is, you can start over. Your intuition about your origins in goodness and love is absolutely correct. God allows you to start over again.

Most of us, when we’re ready to start over, simply want to go back to the life we had before everything went south. But God has other ideas. He doesn’t just want to help us get back to that better life as we imagine it. He wants us to experience a different kind of life altogether. It’s not just your future that changes when you find your way back to God but your past and your present as well.

Are you ready to be done with living out a string of days with pain from the past, no purpose in your present, and no confidence about your future? Your journey away from regret and toward your home in God also takes you toward a deeper, truer life—the kind of life that invites you to start over today and begin living the way God always dreamed you could live . . . forever.

What would it look like to believe that God allows you to start over again today? How would your thoughts about the future change?