We can steward our regrets by learning from them, but not letting them define us.

Jon Gauger shares an illustration from for how we can respond to our regrets. When he was fifteen and Jon found on a hospital bed recovering from major back surgery.

“I was cut open from the top of my neck down to my waist. Every four hours I’m on my stomach, the next four hours I’m on my back. I had been that way for about two weeks and it was time to get a body cast.”

The nurse came in and told Jon that he would feel an itching sensation around his scar. Naturally, she warned him not to itch it.

“Well that’s like saying look at the water in the lake and don’t get thirsty. I started to touch the scar and I started to scratch it when it itched, and I really made it worse.”

This is often how we treat our regrets, we itch and aggravate them until they become more of a problem then they originally were.

“They are scars of the soul, and they’re going to itch every now and again, but when we scratch them, we do ourselves more harm than good.”

There is hope, we can recover from our scars and our regrets. Jon tells the story of when he and his wife were serving on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia. They met a women whose face had been severely burned in a fire.

“Her face was just wretchedly burned. It was shocking at first.”

But the more Jon and his wife encountered the woman with the scars on her face, the more they grew accustomed to it. The more they got to know her, the less they noticed the scars.

“We were just two people on the floating boat, this floating neighborhood going through life. I think when we look at Jesus those regrets cease to have their hold on us, they cease to have their ugliness. Regrets are scars of the soul, but they don’t have to control us.”


Jon Gauger hosts several nationally syndicated programs for Moody Radio and is an award-winning narrator of 50 audio books.

Key Scripture: Psalm 19:14

Featured Songs: The Words I Would Say – Sidewalk Prophets; Dear Younger Me – Mercy Me; The Joy of the Lord – Rend Collective

If you could do it all over again