Windshield or the Rearview

I was thinking about why we spend so much time looking backward, full of regret and wishing that we could change things we did. For me, I guess I think that those things have cost me opportunities and that my life could be so much more than I feel it is. I could take away the guilt and shame that I feel for mistakes and failures, ah the guilt and shame, that is the essence of the problem. We find ourselves locked in a cage of our own design. I don't know how to move on and so I assume that this is where I must stay. I can't forgive myself and so I spend so much of the time that I have been given looking back and wondering what could have been rather than looking ahead and determining what will be. It's a recipe for disaster.
Case in point, I was nineteen years old sitting at the corner of John Pitts Rd. and Star Ave. about the fifth car in line at the stop sign. I'm not sure why but I happened to look in my rearview mirror as I sat there and I saw a Firebird maybe 100 foot back not even starting to slow down. It was close enough that I could see the guy driving looking in his rearview mirror for some reason and realized that he did not see me or the line of cars in front if him through his windshield. I watched as he finally looked in front of him and saw his eyes go wide and his panic as he locked up the brakes. Too late, he slid into my bumper and ended up buying a new bumper for me and doing a good bit of damage to his car as well. I listened as he explained to the FHP trooper how he thought he had just passed a friend going the other way and was looking back to see if he was right. The trooper explained that there is a reason that windshields are much larger than rearview mirrors. A windshield should be the place of emphasis for anyone driving a car forward. Unless you are in reverse, a rearview mirror should only used as a reference point for changing lanes and directions. That's good advice for driving and for life.
Maybe you're like me and the pangs of regret show up often and you would like to just sit and wonder what could be as you look in the rearview. The danger is that you miss what is coming up right in front of you and lose your ability to navigate as it approaches. We have all made mistakes, big and small, but those should just be reference points that help us keep our bearings as we move forward, not focal points that keep us looking backward. The key to moving on I have found is understanding grace, radical grace. The source of that grace? God himself. It is grace that defines me not by my mistakes, but by His love. It is grace that incorporates my failures into His plan rather than excluding me from that plan because of those mistakes. If you find yourself focused on the rearview today or an day, just remember that God's grace frames those images from the past and provides a clean windshield as you move forward.