Is He The One Who Got Away?

This phrase has been running around my head lately: He’s not the one that got away.

Did you catch the “not” I slid in there?

I thought about it one night when I was cooking and listening to the Civil Wars. Their song “The One that Got Away” came on and got me thinking. The song talks about forbidden love, saying “I wish you were the one that got away” and what it’s like to not be able to let go of that person.

As I peeled my carrots and listened, I realized I’m fortunate that I’ve never been in a relationship like the one the song describes, wishing that person had gotten away.

Then, this truth struck me:

No one in my life did get away, at least, not in the sense this phrase entails.

Saying “he’s the one that got away” is like saying “he’s the one I should have been with and then something went wrong and got us off track.” I’ve wondered this before of course, and I’m assuming most of us have when a relationship ends but also, in lots of other areas of our lives besides relationships.

I remember taking forever to decide where I was going to go for graduate school.

I was choosing between two schools that were basically exactly the same, just located in different cities. And when I finally chose one, I immediately wondered if the one I didn’t choose would be the school that got away.

If not going there meant missing out on God’s blessings and will for my life.

Maybe you’ve felt like this.

Maybe you’ve wondered if that was the job opportunity that got away or the move that got away or the apartment that got away. Whatever it is, I think it’s important to not view these things as the one that got away, but rather, as the one that went away.

In the Bible, we are taught about seasons in life and God’s sovereignty in the same scripture: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

The best way to attempt to overrule God’s timing and plan is to say that something in our lives got away, as if it were a mistake or an accident.

I think we can really mean it when we say this.

I know I have. I have felt regretful and certain I had made a wrong decision. I was certain he/it was the one that got away and that I had derailed myself too far this time. But never has this thought brought me peace and never has it propelled me forward, and this is how I’ve grown so convinced that he, it and they did not get away.

Because even in stating that, we stray.

Even in wondering and questioning the past, we get lost in it.

The people and opportunities in our lives didn’t get away; they went away because it was time. Storyline Blog