Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. Unknown
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If I had known back then what I know now, I would have made different decisions.
You’ve heard that do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. It applies to absolutely everyone. I have not yet discovered how to navigate this world, the people in my life, the community I am part of by this scripture. I feel as though I should just exist in these spaces and people and not be close to anyone. You can be under an umbrella, sheltered from the rain, without embracing the person with whom you’re walking. Perhaps that’s how it ought to be.
It's not that I’ve not betrayed nor been betrayed. I don’t understand some things, and what God permits I feel I just have to swallow it, grin and bear it. I want to let it go though. I think some things he allows so we remember how fickle our hearts are, and none of us are exempt.
Some months ago, I found out something that disappointed me. And I understood why that person made the choice they made, because I, too, felt that same betrayal, although for this person, I imagine it cut deeply. But at the end of it all, I still felt the Holy Spirit say that this person ultimately made a choice to leave. I didn’t wonder about it then, but I have to wonder if those we trust have exemption when they cause us hurt. Man’s love has a boundary that it won’t cross.
Some of the dramas I watch, there are moments when I wonder if some of the love, loyalty and devotion portrayed has been experienced in real life. We focus so much on the horrors that people do but rarely highlight the anomalies of purity that some people get to experience. I wonder where I went wrong in life that I missed out on such an experience. Would I have known it if I were born to someone else in another part of the world, with a different community?
But you know, what the Holy Spirit says is true, no matter how bitter. We can highlight someone’s error, we can point to betrayal, we can lament many things, but our choice is under our responsibility.
But I say that sometimes someone withholds the truth from you, and, had you known what they were withholding, you would have made different decisions. Who gets to be responsible for that?
Anyway, these are burdens of the heart that we must release ourselves from. We have to let it go rather than hold someone prisoner, or be held prisoner by the experience. God says he is a restorer; and however he chooses to do that, we must make room for it and believe.
