What Remains

In life, there is a temptation to look back, especially when life hasn’t unfolded in the ways we planned, and see only loss.

Remembering the person you were. The mistakes you made. The things you knew you should have done, but didn’t. The opportunities you let pass because of fear, laziness, pride, or simply the belief that there would always be more time.

And there is something almost cruel about hindsight. You can finally see clearly, but you can no longer go back.

I’ve had chapters in my life where I looked back and wondered if moments, even entire years, were wasted. Not necessarily because I did something wrong, but because the ending I wanted never came.

Relationships can end and leave us feeling as though we wasted our time.

Pursuing dreams can feel wasted if we never arrive where we thought we would.

Time spent waiting can feel wasted if what we’re waiting for never comes.

But were those chapters truly wasted? Or did they simply fail to give us what we wanted?

We can lose something and still gain from it.

We can fail and still be shaped.

We can spend years walking toward a destination only to discover that it was never where we were supposed to remain. Perhaps the road was the reason the destination was placed on our hearts in the first place.

In a letter to his brother after being sentenced to death by firing squad and at the last minute the sentence being commuted, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote:

“When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul—then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”

He is not saying, “Everything happens for a reason, so I regret nothing.”

No.

That is much too comfortable.

He is admitting:

“How much time I wasted on nothing.”

There truly are things we waste.

Hours consumed by things that leave us emptier. Years spent afraid to act. Moments when we should have loved someone better.

Opportunities we didn’t take because we were too afraid of failing. Days, months, and years spent living inside our own heads rather than participating in the life happening around us.

There is an honesty that must take place when we reflect on our lives.

Not everything must be redeemed in our memory and casually tossed beneath the saying, “Everything happens for a reason.”

There are things we do that wound us before they wound anyone else.

Every time we betray what we know is true.

Every time we choose fear over courage.

Every time we refuse to love because love might hurt.

Every time we settle for comfort when we know we were made for something greater.

Every time we return to the same sin and wonder why we still feel empty.

Regret looks back and says:

“I wish I could live it again.”

Repentance looks back, accepts what was lost, and says:

“I will not waste what remains.”

Repentance requires honesty.

Paul writes in Philippians:

“But one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead…”

He is not saying that the past does not matter. His past nearly consumed him.

But he refused to allow who he had been to determine what he would become.

The grace our Savior offers is not found in pretending we haven’t wasted anything.

Rather, grace tells us that the waste does not get the final word.

And there is an irony here.

You can waste the rest of your life regretting the parts you believe you already wasted.

You can look backward for so long that you stop seeing what is in front of you.

Mourning the years that are gone.

Only for another year to pass.

And another.

Until you realize you have created new regrets by grieving the old ones.

Dostoevsky saw the wasted years, but he finally saw that life itself was still there.

As long as you live, there is still something to receive.

Something to give.

Something to repent of.

Something to love.

Something to build.

Something to become.

The book of Joel says:

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”

But we should be careful how we understand restoration.

Restoration does not always mean Yahweh gives us back exactly what we lost.

You cannot go backward.

Relationships may not be restored.

You might not get another opportunity.

You will not become twenty years old again with everything you know now.

Thankfully, Yahweh can do something more profound.

He can make what you lost part of what forms you. Only He can redeem the person who wasted time.

That is completely different from simply returning the time.

Peter could not undo his denial.

David could not undo what he did to Bathsheba.

Paul could not undo his persecution of the Church.

But their worst moments did not become the foundation their identity was built on.

Dostoevsky knew suffering all too well, yet he still wrote:

“Every minute can be an eternity of happiness!”

I don’t interpret that as saying life is always pleasant. Rather, perhaps every moment had become infinitely more valuable because he finally understood that it could not be taken for granted.

The life I live right now is not the one I would have chosen. But it is still the life that has been gifted to me. Ordinary moments are still moments. The people in my life are still gifts. The work in front of me still matters. The breath in my lungs means the Creator still has a path for me.

I’ve had enough chapters of my own life where things ended, changed, or were taken from me that it would be easy to believe the years are simply disappearing.

To look back and ask:

What was all that for?

But perhaps one of the reasons we look back isn’t to regret every minute we cannot recover. Perhaps it is to understand what a minute is worth.

The man who has never lost time rarely appreciates it.

The man who has never failed may not understand how precious another opportunity is.

The man who has never sat in a room wishing he could go back may never fully understand the gift of being able to move forward.

The strangest thing about regret is that it can teach us the value of what was lost. But it can also blind us to the value of what still remains.

I cannot go back and reclaim the years and moments I believe I wasted. I cannot become the man I should have been then and give him another chance. Yet, it seems, the greatest tragedy would not be that I wasted parts of my past. It would be spending the rest of my life mourning what is gone while failing to receive from the Father what is still here.

Life is a gift.

Not the life we once had.

Not the one we imagined.

This one right here.

I cannot change what is behind me.

But because of grace, I am not condemned to waste what is ahead of me.

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Additional reading:

• Philippians 3:13–14

• Esther 4:14

• Psalm 37:23

• Psalm 90:12

• Joel 2:25–26

• Lamentations 3:22–23

• 2 Corinthians 7:10

• Isaiah 43:18–19

• Romans 8:28

• 1 Timothy 1:12–16

• Ecclesiastes 3:1–2

• Ephesians 5:15–16