Four Stages

I think there are four stages of regret. The first, apathy: trying to ignore any negative feelings you may have. This could last any where from two to six weeks. Apathy temporarily let's you 'live' your life without feeling; without worrying. But suppressing feelings can only last so long. The second stage is guilt. This guilt slowly creeps up on you while you are 'trying' to be apathetic. Eventually you cannot ignore your feelings anymore. Along with guilt comes desperately tying to find ways to make yourself feel better. Many times, this results in living in the past and wishing you had done or said something differently. The third stage is frustration. During this stage you have almost exhausted all of your attempts to make things better. You have apologized and you have felt remorse and there seems to be nothing left to do. This is frustrating. And this is exhausting. So the fourth stage is forgiveness. There eventually becomes a moment when you realize there is nothing more to be done but rely completely and utterly on God. And during this stage you are finally able to forgive yourself. This does not mean that others have forgiven you. You cannot change the past but you can change the future. So there is no point in dwelling on what you did or did not do, but rather dwell on what you can do today and tomorrow that will make things right. It is also imperative to remember that God is on your side. So at any point, I you feel you are stuck in one of these four stages, talk to God. He always makes me feel better.