“Where am I? Who am I? This isn’t the life I pictured for myself. I’m also pretty sure this isn’t the life that God wanted for me either.” Rehearsing every choice that has led you to this moment.

I’ve been there. I’ve looked around at my life and thought those thoughts. Those are not fun times, when I realized that I had let myself down, and I’d let God down.

Each day is a new opportunity to pray to God to help you make the right choices and to ask forgiveness for the wrong ones you’ve made.

The really good news is that you don’t have to stay there. You don’t have to stay in those moments where your life is in shambles and you feel alone. As Christians we have access to the ultimate do-over: repentance.

Getting real

Let’s get real about our lives and ourselves. How do we end up in those moments where we’ve taken a wrong turn in life and we’ve wandered further than we could have imagined? We get there because we’re human. Proverbs 14:12 tells us that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Without God we get hopelessly lost because we can’t see which way to go. We are told to follow our hearts, but problem with that is that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). We cannot do things just because they feel good, unless we are prepared to reap the consequences.

Just as God gave Adam and Eve a choice (a choice to obey Him or disobey Him), He has given us a choice:

“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;  that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).

God wants you to choose life—to choose Him—because He’s already chosen us, and He’s not letting us go. “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God” (Psalm 14:2). And Jesus said, “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him” (John 4:23).

But even when we slip and find ourselves far from God, He’s not giving up on us: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He will come and find us. “For thus says the Lord God: ‘Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out’” (Ezekiel 34:11). “For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:11-14).

The first step

Back to that moment in the mirror: We’ve wandered away from God, and He’s there, waiting for us to return to Him, or maybe find Him for the first time. What does it mean to choose God? How do we do that?

The very first step is sometimes the hardest: Pray to God for forgiveness. Jesus spoke of this in a parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.' And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14). This is the beginning of changing your life.

Turning to God is a process, but it always takes that first step. And every single day is a new opportunity to once again choose God and start anew. Each day is a new opportunity to pray to God to help you make the right choices and to ask forgiveness for the wrong ones you’ve made. It is never too late to start over. It doesn’t mean that all the consequences for the choices we have made will disappear, but it does mean that we can move forward. We can create a life that is beautiful to ourselves and pleasing to God.