Beggar's Bread

by Fred W. Anson
They say that if you don’t have any regrets then you’re probably not trying hard enough. If that’s true then I often wonder if I’m trying too much because I have a lot of regrets. In fact, after I joined the Facebook groups for my old High School and the Nazarene Church that I grew up in I spent the first couple of weeks apologizing to everyone.

Then a funny thing happened, I realized that most of the people that I thought I’d so offended back in the day either didn’t remember or didn’t care any more. So essentially I’d spent all those years needlessly beating myself up, avoiding others, and taking side streets shadowed in shame when all I needed to do was show up and be myself.

The truth of the matter is I’d been lied to and had squandered much of my life as a result of it.

Actually, I should have known all this since Michael and Stormie Omartian warned me in song way back in 1978 . . .

Ms. Past
(click above to hear song)
Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.
Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.

Ms. Past, she’s such a wicked lady,
Ms. Past, she’s always there a waiting,
She’s the Devil’s favorite tool,
She’ll play you like a fool,
She’ll try until she rules.

Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.
Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.

Ms. Past, she’ll always try to feed you,
Ms. Past, she’ll say He never freed you.
But don’t fall for her disguise,
And look back in her eyes,
She wants you paralyzed, by all she knows.

Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.
Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.

Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.
Don’t look, don’t look back just let her go,
Lately, all she’s done is lay you low.

And there’s certainly no doubt that I’ve been a “tool” allowing Ms. Past to constantly sting and restrain me with fiery darts of regret!

In the end, I most certainly want to learn from the past but I don’t want to be bound by it.  After all, as Larry Norman observed, “Your life’s a play you can’t rehearse.” And mistakes are actually a blessing in disguise since, if you learn from them, you can avoid making the same ones again, again, and again.

What’s more, human development experts (not to the mention the Bible) tell us that mistakes are one way (actually the main way) that humans grow and mature in a number of areas.  So, that means that occasionally we’ll pick up a regret or two in the process:

If you don’t, then you’re just not trying hard enough.
And if you do, don’t look back, just let it go.

(from the album “Seasons of the Soul”)
Lyrics by Stormie Omartian, Music by Michael Omartian
© 1978 “See This House” Music, Used by Permission, All Rights Reserved.