Let regret motivate you

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,” Philippians 3:13 NIV

In an article titled “A 63-Year-Old Runner Changed the Way I Think About Regret,” Lindsay Crouse wrote, “Regret is self-defeating, backward-looking, a negative feeling to avoid at all costs. But for Mariko Yugeta, regret has been a propellant. At 63, the Japanese athlete has quietly become the fastest woman in her age group ever to finish a marathon. She’s a sexagenarian who is beating the times she chased as a promising amateur athlete in her 20s. After putting her athletic goals aside for decades to raise children and pursue a full-time career, in 2019 she became the first woman over 60 to run a marathon in under three hours. In January 2021, at age 62, she ran her fastest marathon ever, in 2:52:13 — meaning the world records she’s now breaking are the ones she set. As Yugeta reclaims the dreams she once abandoned, she says her athletic breakthrough is “fueled by regret." “I don’t think the feeling of regret is a negative emotion,” Yugeta told me. “What’s negative are thoughts like, ‘I can’t run fast anymore’ or ‘I’m too old to do this,’ and I think that it’s an entirely positive way to live, to use any regrets you might have as motivation to achieve a goal.” Crouse went on to say, “ I’d never heard of someone with a comeback story quite like Yugeta’s, which strikes me as a case study in how regret doesn’t have to drag us down. Used the right way, it can inspire us.”

And you know, if regret can be defined as sadness or disappointment over a lost opportunity, you and I would do well to follow the example of Paul who said, “ But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..” You see, Paul had a very checkered past. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul had opposed Christianity and all those who practiced it so vehemently that he actively participated in the persecution of countless Jesus followers. As you can imagine, this left Paul with a lot of guilt that if not “used the right way” would have kept him from setting the world on fire for Christ. Paul not only refused to focus on the past, he vowed to completely devote the rest of his life to serving his blessed Savior to make up for the time he lost. In other words, Paul knew he couldn’t change the past but he could change the future and so used his regrets to motivate him to make the most of every moment he had left to evangelize the world.

So I don’t know about you my friend, but my biggest regret in life is that I didn’t wholeheartedly devote myself to serving Christ sooner. Which is the very reason that I, like Paul, am so zealous and enthusiastic now to know Him and to make His great name known. I want to make up for lost time by living every day forward with no regrets and I hope you do too.

Heavenly Father, thank You for reminding us that although we can’t get lost time back or undo any of the wrongs we might have committed, we CAN make the choice today to strain forward to what You have in store for us rather than to look back at our mistakes. Fill us with passion and zeal from this day forward to serve You all that we have Lord so we can avoid having anymore regrets. It’s in your precious name we pray Jesus. Amen.

Happy Running!!!