Hope Anyway by Leeana TankersleyНамуна

Day Six

Rebuilding 

I know what it’s like not to be able to figure out how it would be possible to put any of the pieces back together again. No matter how you look at these parts, you cannot figure out how they will add up to any kind of new life. I understand. In the midst of great upheaval, we long for sweeping clarity. Yet putting life back together again is an unfolding that typically happens one small increment at a time. 

In sports, we call it a rebuilding year. A team gets a new coach or graduates a huge class of seniors or starts a rookie quarterback. It’s a rebuilding year, and we change our expectations or lower our standards accordingly.

Some years are rebuilding years, and that means things look different. We might pull off a few come-from-behind wins, but we’re not expecting the Super Bowl. Not this year anyway. Showing up is its own big deal. 

When we’re rebuilding, we tend to meet up with regret somewhere along the way. 

There are two kinds of regret. One is productive, where we look back and we see specific lessons we’ve learned. I think this kind of regret is rare. 

Most regret is a thief. It steals the present from us while we rehearse a past we can’t control. Most regret robs us of our humanity. It looks back on a situation with all the information, all the perspective, and all the hindsight and judges the decisions we made when we had none of those things. Certainly, if we made a hurtful choice, we need to make amends, but often our regrets are more free-floating and gnawing.

If your regret is productive, moving you forward toward wholeness and healing, then let it be. But if your regret is unproductive, taking the time you have and turning it into emotional chaos, then ask God for the grace to forgive yourself. 

I want you to know that it’s not over for you. You can rebuild. It is painstaking. It is exhausting. 

But at some point—and I say this after a lot of time and tears—you will see that you aren’t where you were. You aren’t where you started. You will stand back, with the smallest bit of perspective, and you will see that you have participated in the moment-to-moment of a miracle. 

God, help me see the ways I have been healing.