Read that again:

You can start over and finish well.

I don’t know why that statement resonates with me so strongly.

Actually, I do.

I don’t have many regrets. Yes, I’ve made some bad choices and decisions. I have found myself in patterns of behavior that have not served me well at all. I’ve dug myself into some significant holes. None of them have been moral failures or crimes.

Nope. They’ve mostly been just stupid.

You’ve heard this plenty of times: You can’t fix stupid.

If “fixing stupid” means going back to the past and undoing things you’ve done or said, that is absolutely true. You can’t take it back.

Here’s a miracle, though: You can start over and finish well.

If you want to try a little exercise, here ya go. Get a piece of paper and a pen, or open any notes app on your device.

You won’t enjoy this, but it’ll lay some foundation for good stuff.

Number your paper from 1 to 5. I want you to come up with 5 stupid incidents in your life that were caused by you – decisions you made, things you said, or habits you instilled in yourself. You won’t have to share these with the class, so be totally honest and authentic. Sugarcoating won’t help. I’ll wait.

Wasn’t that fun? And now, I want you to circle the one out of the whole list that had or has the biggest impact on you.

Guess what? You can’t take it back. And it could have been of such significance that it altered the trajectory of your life.

I hope that little exercise didn’t put you in a total funk. Again – you can’t take it back, and in some fashion you have to make peace with that. It’s done. Over. Finished.

Still. You can start over and finish well. We just have to come up with a strategy as to how that can happen.

I don’t want to give you a pep talk. I do want you to think in terms of what’s ahead for you. The reason you aren’t dead is because you haven’t completed what God put you here to accomplish.

Let’s fix stupid, shall we?

1. You’ve identified some events in your life that have hamstrung you. You may be experiencing fear or shame because of them.
2. Claim this thought: “You are never good the first time.” That’s from John Maxwell. Maxwell is a pretty smart guy.
3. Mistakes and failures come to anyone who has a pulse. There’s nothing new there.
4. As hard as it is to believe, those mistakes and failures can and should build character and make you resolute. You can’t learn and grow if things go your way all the time.
5. I say this all the time: Failure is an event, not a person.
6. Don’t wish for a do-over. The lessons you learned the first time were sufficient.
7. Everything – and I mean everything – you’ve experienced is a foundation for the positive things that come next.
   1. Look once more at the number one thing on your list.
   2. Identify the most significant lesson you learned from it.
   3. Ask yourself: If faced again with the same circumstances that brought on your bad decision, what would you do different?
   4. Is there a principle in what you learned that you can apply to other similar circumstances?
   5. If so, what would keep you from modifying your behavior next time? (Hint: Whatever it is, don’t do it again.)
   6. Remember you have total, utter control over the choices you make. It’s not someone or something else’s fault. That gives you extraordinary power and authority.
8. You aren’t too old, uneducated, unlucky, unfortunate, or unable to start fresh. You’ve had experiences that have prepared you to do so much better the next time around. Claim that.
9. Give me an excuse that will convince me that you can’t finish well. But I wouldn’t work too hard on that one. I will not enable your excuses. You shouldn’t enable your excuses either.
10. Truth: You already have inside you what you need to do to start over and finish well. There has to be a connection made between what you know you should do and actually doing it. You have the solution to your pr0blems already at your fingertips. So how do you make that a reality? At the risk of sounding naive, here it is: you just do it.

Please, please, please understand – I am a fellow pilgrim and sojourner with all this. I’m saying things I know to be true. But as stated in #10 above, just doing it is a really acute struggle some days.

Ancient script says this: “… I do not practice what I want to do, but what I hate… what a wretched man I am!” For thousands of years, men and women better than you and me have dealt with this awful conundrum. “Who,” said the apostle Paul, “will rescue me from this body of death?” He takes a deep breath and says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”*

I’m a person of faith. I’m not saying that it is impossible for you to start over apart from God. In my context, though, I acknowledge my inability to experience lasting change apart from him.

At the beginning of 2018, I made the very public statement, “2018 will be my best year ever.” Eight months into 2019, my success criteria has shifted. After dealing with flooding, a parathyroid tumor that really wreaked havoc with my calcium level and my mental capacity, a renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer, if you please), and a concussion which has caused post concussion syndrome (the worst) … I’m sticking by my statement. 2018 and 2019 have not been the best years in the conventional sense. It looks pretty awful in retrospect, and there are still more challenges to come.

Know what, though? It’s gonna be okay. It always is. Always has been. I can’t begin to comprehend all the “why’s” in play here. In the flesh, it’d be easy for me to say “the heck with this.”

All these events have put me in a place of starting over with my “new normal.” I don’t know if I would be willing to put effort into a new start had I not been faced with these challenges. It’s all part of a plan that I can’t completely see quite yet. But I have utter confidence in God shepherding me and orchestrating events  all around me in order to fulfill His destiny for me.

That’s what starting over and finishing well means.

My story is your story. You’ve had challenges galore. You’ve made some bonheaded choices. You’ve wanted to blame God, others, circumstances, unlucky breaks, everything to excuse yourself for how you’re feeling and acting. I have, too.

Well, dang it, we are better than that. We are capable of more. Inside each of us is the solution to our ordeals. We need to simply receive with gratitude, and act on what we know the wise thing to do is.

Start over. Finish well. The world needs a completed and fulfilled you.

*from Romans 7:15-25.