After I graduated from college, I found myself in the ebb and flow of sometimes feeling good about myself, and then later having downturns when things around me turned dark and dreary. At first I thought this was normal, because I had been dealing with these feelings for quite a long time. But after a while, I knew that I needed to get off this roller coaster and deal with what was going on.
One feeling that kept bothering me was a sense of regret. Being a professional musician, I had performed off campus almost every weekend during college. Consequently, I felt as if I had lost the chance to have a social college experience, and I could never go back. I also felt alone, missing the friends I had made.
At this point, I stepped back and prayed for God’s guidance. During some spiritual study, I came across the following Bible verse: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). This meant to me that gifts that showed God’s goodness, including the opportunity to attend college, did not include any shadows or darkness; I could look back with gratitude. I realized that regret was a “ghost from the past,” an illusion trying to steal my present joy. The solution was to find things in my life that I could be immediately grateful for, such as being with my family, who really cared about me. I began to more fully realize that I was deserving of God’s goodness.
