Many of us long for a fresh start.
We carry regrets, missed opportunities, or seasons of life that feel wasted.
But when you’re redeemed by His grace, your past doesn’t disqualify you—it becomes part of the story God is still writing.
You don’t need a rewind.
You need redemption.
And grace offers exactly that.
What It Means to Be Redeemed by His Grace
Have you ever looked back on a season of your life and thought, “I wasted it”?
The time you spent stuck, numb, lost in distraction or self-doubt.
The days you couldn’t move forward because you were too weighed down by regret.
If you’ve ever wished you could hit rewind—start over, do it differently—you’re not alone.
But the good news of the gospel is this:
You don’t have to go back to be redeemed.
Because God doesn’t erase the past—He transforms it.
You are not disqualified.
You are redeemed by His grace.
My Story of Grace in the Middle of Lost Years
Over the past ten years, I walked through a season that felt like one long detour.
One challenge after another—loss, stress, transitions, caregiving—slowly drained me.
Not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
Until one day, I realized I felt completely lost.
I no longer recognized the woman in the mirror.
I had spent so long putting my dreams and desires on the backburner…
so long living from crisis to crisis…
so long pouring myself out for everyone around me…
that by the time things finally settled, I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore.
And when I saw how much time had slipped by, I grieved.
But in that place of lostness, God began to whisper.
He didn’t shame me for the years that felt wasted.
He didn’t ask me to pretend I had it all together.
He simply began to show me that even the years I thought were lost could be redeemed by His grace.
The emotional shutdown that once made me feel ashamed?
It gave me the empathy I now carry for others.
The business starts and stops I saw as failure?
They gave me wisdom for how I build differently now.
The times I gave up in despair, only to try again?
They became my testimony of perseverance.
Even the escape into books I used to numb my overwhelm?
It reignited my love of words—and rekindled my dream to write.
Grace didn’t erase the past.
It repurposed it.
And in doing so, it reminded me that God hadn’t abandoned me in the silence.
He was working even then.
What If the Delay Was Part of the Design?
We often treat delay as failure.
As proof that we missed it.
That we were too slow, too inconsistent, too emotional, too distracted.
But grace teaches us to see delay differently. It whispers: “This didn’t stop the plan. This shaped who I needed to be in order to carry it.”
Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t ready—not because I was lazy or unworthy—but because there was a deeper becoming still in process.
A kind of spiritual formation that couldn’t be rushed.
There’s no way I would have been able to build the kind of business I’m building now—one that’s anchored in truth, slow, Spirit-led, and rooted in healing—without having first learned to walk through wilderness seasons.
Those delays weren’t detours.
They were preparation.
And that’s what it means to be redeemed by His grace.
Not that we bypass the hard things, but that God uses even the waiting to build something deeper than we imagined.
Grace Doesn’t Rewind Time. It Restores It.
This is where God’s math never quite makes sense—
and yet somehow, makes perfect sense.
“I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten…”
— Joel 2:25
This promise was originally spoken to the people of Israel after a devastating plague.
They had suffered immense loss—economically, agriculturally, emotionally.
Their land had been stripped bare by locusts.
And God, through the prophet Joel, promised not just to forgive them—
but to restore what had been lost.
The Hebrew word used for restore here is shalam—
it means to make whole, to repay, to bring back into peace and completeness.
God didn’t just say, “I’ll give you a new season.”
He said, “I’ll redeem what you thought was already gone.”
And This Promise Points to the Heart of the Gospel
While Joel’s prophecy was specific to Israel, the pattern of God’s heart is consistent:
He is a restorer.
A God who doesn’t rewind time,
but who works within it to do something even greater.
There isn’t a direct New Testament quote of Joel 2:25,
but we see this principle lived out over and over again.
In Jesus’ words to Peter after his failure:
“Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17)
In Paul’s reminder that grace isn’t just a cover—it’s power:
“By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)
The Gospel doesn’t erase your past.
It reclaims it.
That’s what it means to be redeemed by His grace.
What If You Were Never Meant to Bloom in That Season?
Sometimes we grieve a season that didn’t bear fruit—
a time in our lives we look back on with regret, wondering why we didn’t thrive.
But maybe the soil wasn’t ready.
Maybe the season wasn’t meant for harvest—it was meant for rooting.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
— Ecclesiastes 3:11
The Hebrew word for time in this passage is eth—
which speaks to appointed time, season, or divinely ordered moment.
And earlier in the chapter, we’re told that there is a time for everything under heaven.
That means you weren’t late.
You weren’t lazy.
You weren’t overlooked.
You were being shaped in a season that wasn’t yet time to build.
God didn’t cause the delays or the pain—but He sustained you through them, and He’s redeeming it now.
Receiving What Grace Has Made Possible
If you’ve been sitting with your own “lost years,”
you don’t need to carry them like a badge of shame anymore.
You don’t have to keep replaying the past,
wishing you’d done it differently.
You don’t have to hustle to make up for lost time.
Because grace has already been at work—
quietly, steadily—redeeming what you thought was beyond repair.
You don’t have to earn your way back into purpose.
You don’t have to prove you’re worth the chance.
If you are in Christ, you are already redeemed by His grace.
That means you are invited to live forward, not backward.
To stop carrying the weight… and start walking in the freedom.
You stop asking for the rewind.
And you start receiving the redemption.
You stop trying to make up for lost time.
And you start asking God how He wants to use what you’ve gained.
You stop cursing the version of you who was just trying to survive.
And you start blessing the version of you who now has something to say—
something to offer—
and a Spirit-led calling to walk in.
With love and belief in you,
