So what are you going to do now?

By Jeff Becraft

“So what are you going to do now?”

That’s what someone said to me one time when I had just described a situation that years ago, I wish I had made a different decision.

They are not the only person who has said something like this to me . I have heard other people say things like this to me, when talking about smaller issues, about certain phases of life or a certain chapter or maybe even a few months period and looking backwards and saying, “I wish I had done that phase differently. I wish I’d done that chapter differently. I wish I’d made this choice back then.”

One person just shrugged their shoulders at me and said, “So what are you going to do now?”

And that’s the whole point. What are we going to do now?

One of my favorite all-time movie scenes is in a movie called Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire came out when I was in college. There was a scene that when I first saw it, I was like, “That’s not real. They just did that because it’s a movie.” But then I went back and read the biography of Eric Liddell and indeed, this scene did happen.

It is in a big race and Liddell is bumped by another runner and knocked off the track onto the ground. I have shown this scene at various camps as part of a message and I’ll say, “Keep an eye on his face… watch where he’s looking.” He rolls over and as his head comes up, he is looking down the track. He never looks backwards at all. Liddell jumps up and keeps running. He is way behind the other runners at this point.

There are many life principles in this movie… and particularly just in this one scene… but we do not have time to cover all of those today. The one we want to focus on is that Liddle focuses forward and keeps running. He eventually catches the pack, passes the pack, and wins at the tape… and then falls down in exhaustion.

He never looked backwards. He didn’t focus on the wrong done to him by the other runner, he didn’t focus on how much ground he had to make up, he didn’t give up. He simply forgot what was behind and pressed on to what was ahead.

This is a great lesson for all of us.

It’s a great day to press forward!

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  [email protected].