Too much talk, Not enough walk

Venting has been the excuse for saying some pretty harsh things in my life. As a teen, I said many things that hurt my mom, and even though the wounds my words inflicted were visibly apparent, I refused to apologize, preferring instead to retreat to my room and wait for the dust to settle.  In fact, apologizing was so rare for me, I vividly remember how it felt the first time that I sought her out to say I was sorry. She herself had gone to her room, and all the way there the words rehearsed themselves in my mind, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. It seemed that my vocal chords had no muscle memory for them. Talking is as natural as breathing for me, but I realized that saying "I'm sorry for..." was never going to be natural, never going to be easy.

“Sorry”
 a word that by itself says very little.
A simple "sorry" could mean "excuse me".
Oh,... sorry.
We tell a child who has made some other child cry, "Say you're sorry".
"Sawwwy" he says,
but what does he think that means? Does he think it is a magic word like "please"?
"Sorry" could be the means of avoiding punishment, a loophole that gets you out of trouble.
“I’m sorry”
but not really.

Once I thought I would see if my daughter knew why she was sorry, so I asked her to say "I was wrong for....". You would have thought her vocal chords were glued shut. Her problem was just like mine!
No surprise there!
Try it yourself.
It is much easier to say a generic "I'm sorry" than to admit what you did wrong.

I wonder about all this sorry business.
If I feel sorry, does that mean I've repented?
What am I usually sorry for?
I might feel sorry for getting caught, for letting myself down, for disappointing myself. I often feel sorry for making a mistake, for being less than perfect, for opening myself up for blame, criticism, or judgment. I feel sorry for myself when I make someone angry at me. I feel sorry for the consequences of my mistakes.
Do any of these mean I have truly repented?

A dictionary definition would say that repentance is sincere regret or remorse.
I'm familiar with this feeling of regret, familiar with reliving, over and over again, each of my regrets.
Why didn't I learn faster? Why didn't I shut my mouth before I said those things? Why couldn't I have done it right? Why did I get so jealous? Why wasn't I strong enough to avoid severe depression? Why did I lose my temper?  Why was I so destructive to others and to my relationships? Why did I eat that donut? Why didn't I say "no"!
Regrets. First they torment, then they anger.
I deeply regret my failures because I want to think of myself as a better person than that, because I fear that others will think of me as less than what I want them to think of me.
My regret is always sincere, does that mean I have repented?

The Biblical definition of repentance is very different from one you will find in the dictionary.
Biblical repentance means to change your mind and turn to the Lord, but this concept was lost in the Latin translation, so that today, all we have is this idea of feeling sorry and regret.
The problem is that regret and remorse don't really have anything to do with repentance.

Charles Spurgeon describes well this conflicting nature of repentance in his book "All of Grace".
“I hear another man cry, “Oh, sir my want of strength lies mainly in this, that I cannot repent sufficiently!” A curious idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. Whence comes this unreasonable notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience. They are in great error. Still, I know what they mean, for in the days of my darkness I used to feel in the same way. I desired to repent, but I thought that I could not do it, and yet all the while I was repenting. Odd as it may sound, I felt that I could not feel. I used to get into a corner and weep, because I could not weep; and I fell into bitter sorrow because I could not sorrow for sin. What a jumble it all is when in our unbelieving state we begin to judge our own condition! It is like a blind man looking at his own eyes. My heart was melted within me for fear, because I thought that my heart was as hard as an adamant stone. My heart was broken to think that it would not break. Now I can see that I was exhibiting the very thing which I thought I did not possess; but then I knew not where I was. Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance. We can no more repent perfectly than we can live perfectly. However pure our tears, there will always be some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even in our best repentance. But listen!
To repent is to change your mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God. There is sorrow implied in this; but the main point is the turning of the heart from sin to Christ. If there be this turning, you have the essence of true repentance, even though no alarm and no despair should ever have cast their shadow upon your mind.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, All of Grace [With CD]

The main point is the turning of the heart from sin to Christ.
Why do we linger and stumble and get stuck in groans and despair about our sin, all the while claiming that we want to be forgiven, but insisting we don't feel it?
Why don't we know true victory from sin?
Why does all our efforts at repentance seem to only serve to distance us from God?

The first principle of repentance is to turn, but the problem is that I can sit in remorse and regret indefinitely, without ever turning around. What's worse, they can be born exclusively out of the flesh, born out of self-love, self-hate, and self-centeredness. Fleshly regret and remorse dump me in a cesspool of guilt and shame where I wallow until the bad feeling lessens and I feel strong enough to keep on going.

We are dead men walking, and I don't mean the zombie kind. We are as those who live every day with a death sentence, every day we pick up the dying of Jesus, and that means every day we embrace weakness, expect suffering and choose humility.
There is one more step included in this life of dying and that is repentance, the critical step between dying and walking. Without repentance, there is no real change of heart, without repentance, you are still going the wrong direction, without repentance you can't be walking by the Spirit.