we've been saved through grace.

It's true. Even if we have a really bad day, there could be a moment in there that we'll remember forever, a special memory we'll treasure. When you back on your life a few years ago, when things were different -- you remember the moments, the smiling thoughts, the laughs and... here you are today.  

I won't be in high school forever. I'll meet other people in my life. I'll have decisions to make, and different opportunities to accept. They won't be the same as everyone else's. If I'm going to follow what everyone else does, how can I live the life God so perfectly designed for me? Things might seem right to people, but... ultimately, God is the only One who knows. If I desire to live my life the way God planned -- like, literally, He really did plan way back at the beginning of the world how He wants my life to be -- I have to leave the world and choose to listen to Him. 

He gave us free will. Why? Not because He doesn't want to be blamed if something goes wrong. Because, quite frankly -- we do that anyway. We make a mistake, a wrong decision -- and we're like, "God! What's happenin'? Where'd you go?"

"Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.
 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing!  No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing."

 Ephesians 2. I love the way of words The Message gives us. 

I regret stuff. I feel bad about things I've done. And that, I think, is when we truly begin to understand and appreciate the gift of forgiveness. Because God, our Daddy -- He's a merciful God. 

NIV; Ephesians 2
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—  not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.