Grace Redeems, Not Rewinds
Grace doesn’t rewind time—it redeems it. Even your lost years can begin to serve you when grace reshapes how the story ends.
This reflection is adapted from the full-length article on my blog that includes deeper biblical teaching: Redeemed by His Grace—How God Uses Even the Years You Thought Were Wasted.
We often wish grace would act like a rewind button.
Take us back.
Erase the years.
Undo the choices.
Give us another shot at what we feel we’ve squandered.
But grace isn’t interested in making you go back.
Grace is interested in making you whole—right here.
Because God isn’t trying to recreate a version of your past.
He’s trying to reveal the glory in your present—
and do something so deeply redemptive
that even the lost years begin to serve you.
What Does Grace Actually Redeem?
Grace doesn’t erase what happened.
It reassigns its purpose.
It takes the detour and makes it part of the map.
Over the past ten years, a series of back-to-back challenges, trials, and tragedies slowly drained me—mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Until one day, I woke up feeling lost.
I no longer recognized the woman in the mirror.
I had spent so long putting my needs, dreams, and desires on the backburner…
so long living from crisis to crisis…
so long pouring everything I had into everyone and everything else…
that when I came out the other side,
I didn’t know what I wanted out of life anymore.
And when I realized how much time I’d lost, I grieved.
But in the middle of all that lostness,
God began whispering.
That decade I thought was wasted?
Grace had turned it into training ground.
My emotional shutdown?
It gave me the compassion I now have for others.
All those failed attempts at building something while life was falling apart?
They gave me the wisdom to build differently now.
The starts and stops—those moments I gave up in despair, only to get back up and try again?
They became my testimony of perseverance.
And all those books I escaped into when life felt like too much?
They reignited my hunger for words…
and rekindled the dream to write.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Grace doesn’t skip chapters.
It weaves them into the journey.
And when grace redeems something, it doesn’t just fix what was broken—it makes it more beautiful than it ever could have been otherwise.
What If the Delay Was Part of the Design?
We so often treat delay as failure.
As proof that we missed it.
But grace teaches us to see delay differently:
“This didn’t stop the plan. This shaped who I needed to be in order to carry it.”
I wasn’t ready back then.
Not because I was lazy.
Not because I wasn’t enough.
But because there was a deeper becoming still in process.
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.
Grace Doesn’t Rewind Time. It Restores It.
This is where God’s math makes no sense—
and yet somehow, makes perfect sense.
“I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.”
— Joel 2:25
God doesn’t just redeem our story by helping us start over.
He compresses time.
He multiplies fruit.
He accelerates growth—
not because we hustle,
but because we trust.
And I’ve experienced that acceleration firsthand.
No, I’ll never get those exact hours or years back.
But I’ve received something far more valuable:
A life that’s aligned instead of frantic.
Whole instead of hustling.
Filled with meaning instead of shame.
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 need to keep replaying the past,
wishing you’d done it differently.
You don’t need to hustle to make up for lost time.
Because grace has already been at work—
quietly, steadily—
redeeming what you thought was beyond repair.
Now comes the invitation:
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 trying her best 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,
P.S. Did this reflection resonate with you? Want to receive regular encouragement like this directly in your email inbox? If yes, then I invite you to a free subscription to Her Second Chapter.