Hey Mark,

I believe, too, that God is the answer. More specifically, the answer is faith in His goodness and care for you. My struggle with misery revolved around believing that my past circumstances dictated my future success in life.
When I followed my own misery, the less able I was to hear from God.
When I followed my own misery, the less able I was to remember the things God already told me in His Word
When I followed my own misery, the less receptive I was to the Holy Spirit who is ready and willing to provide comfort and direction.

What helped me was realizing how much I worship my past experiences as “the truth of my life.” It takes work to call out every negative, defeating thought and choose faith instead, but there is no other way around it. This is a real-life example of what it means in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. I consider it a victory to work to defeat a life-limiting belief.

As it is always my hope in these blogs, I too hope others will join this conversation with their own thoughts, understandings, experiences and questions.

I certainly relate to the misery and regret you write about for things I have done and not done. When I express my regrets I often hear “you weren’t ready” or “she wasn’t the one” and I find little comfort in those well meaning words. Fear governs my decisions and as you say I worship thoughts that serve my misery and that’s hard to admit to. God is the answer and I’d like to hear more about how that worked for you (and others!)