My husband and I took a train trip recently. At the beginning of the journey, we found ourselves sitting in seats facing backwards. I asked if it bothered him and if he preferred to move. “No,” he said, “it’s okay. At least this way we’ll know where we’ve been.”
It’s an interesting way to experience train travel, not knowing or seeing what lies around the bend, and it mirrors the way we experience life. We simultaneously see the past while abiding in the present. Or at least trying to. Being the human critters that we are, we’re not always content with immediacy and our current surroundings. At times we crane our necks, trying desperately to get a glimpse of the future, perhaps thinking we can exert a measure of control over the path that lies ahead. For some of us, “Let go and let God” can be a very difficult trust fall. “Tell you what, God. You look tired. How ‘bout I drive for a while? Maybe just this one stretch up ahead?” We’d be much better off if we could just say/pray, “Jesus, take the wheel,” but relinquishing control, or rather our illusions about it, can be a genuine struggle.
While speculations about the future are often fraught with anxiety, ruminations about the past can be problematic as well. They have the potential to be pleasant and fill us with gratitude, but they can also lead us down rabbit holes of despair if we’re not careful. Scrutinizing wrong actions, bad behavior, or ill-advised decisions can prove instructive and fruitful, especially in instances where we need to make amends or ask for forgiveness, but not always. When regret pairs up with pride, we get overly frustrated by our inability to achieve perfection and come out smelling like a rose in both the world’s eyes and our own. If only I had said/done that! If only I hadn’t said/done that! And on and on it goes. Like vultures hovering over roadkill, we pick at the remains of our past, trying desperately to rewrite history in our minds and breathe life into that which is long dead.
Keith McNally, the New York City restaurateur, wrote a memoir with the title I Regret Almost Everything. Wow. Such a brave but incredibly sad thing to say, but I admit it struck a chord. I’ve often experienced those pangs when I’ve looked at the road behind me. We want desperately to perform well, but our sin and humanity have a way of tripping us up, and we find ourselves instead Clinging to the Wreckage, another great memoir title from John Mortimer. In Auberon Waugh’s autobiography, Will This Do?, he explains his reasons for writing.
Perhaps all lives reduce, outside the imponderable perception of God, to a scrapbook of false or partial recollections, deliberate evasions and suppressions. […]
The only question left hanging in the air is the one which every journalist asks himself on submitting an article. It is also the one with which we may all eventually, in trembling hope, face our Maker: Will this do?
I picture Auberon (and us) hearing back, gently, “No, it won’t, child. But don’t worry, because I’ve made a way.”
The Apostle Paul, who had been riding on the backwards train for most of his life, persecuting the church, had a dramatic encounter with Jesus then moved to the forward-facing seats, declaring, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:13). He underscored this idea when he wrote to the church at Corinth, “The sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation; but the sorrow of the world produces death” (2 Cor. 7:10).
Some might say Paul was being too easy on himself, shaking off the past. But if godly sorrow makes us repent — literally turn around — and do so without regret, perhaps it’s no surprise Paul could move forward. C. S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor — that is the only way out of our ‘hole.’” Not just a balm for our past but a hopeful future.
Tom Waits seems to get it, and he paints a wonderful picture of this grace that Paul and others have experienced in “Down There by the Train”:
Well, there’s a place I know where the train goes slow
Where the sinners can be washed in the blood of the Lamb. […]Down there by the train
Down there where the train goes slow […]I’ve never asked forgiveness, I’ve never said a prayer
I’ve never given of myself and I’ve never truly cared
I’ve hurt the ones who love me and I’m still raising Cain
I’ve taken the low road and if you’ve done the same,Meet me down there by the train […]
Down there where the train goes slow.
On the return trip, my husband and I sat in the forward-facing seats.
