It doesn't have to be this way.
No matter what we've thought, said or done, the Lord is always willing to take us back. We just have to start walking towards Him instead of away from Him. If we can take one thing from the book of Jeremiah, it is that life does not have to be that way.
In these chapters we read about various nations that are condemned, but these nations each represent a faulty way of thinking that leads us to our own destruction. We don't have to be like those nations - we can either go peacefully to Babylon or just avoid the whole death and destruction thing if we just stop worshipping other gods.
For more, see the Sermon Short video here.