My heart is heavy hearing this because I know that regrets are a hard, hard experience. When parents have identified that there was something important that they should have done for their kids but didn't, it can feel so hopeless because there is no going back into the past and there is no do-over. So what is is, and that is painful to live with. I think a lot of parents of grown children can relate to this because parents carry regrets in so many areas: missed milestones, how they disciplined, regrets about work-life balance, or decisions they made about their child's health, safety, well-being, or education. Regardless of what the parent has come to regret, I want to instill some hope that is rooted in the reality that we have a living, redeeming God who enters into our stories now with new help and new mercies. Your parenting story isn't over. Your child's story isn't over.
So what does it look like to move forward now with faith? We'll consider three steps. The first, growing in clarity about what happened. The second, relating to God over what happened. And third, relating to your kids now in new ways.
First, I want you to just take a clear-eyed look at what happened and ask God for insight in that process. Regrets tend to swirl and they feel so bad that we can lose orientation to the facts. So talk about what happened with your spouse or a trusted friend who can help you see more clearly. Talk about what happened that you regret. Talk about how things played out the way they did. What can account for what you did in that scenario? So be thinking about being honest about yourself in the situation. The tendency is for the insight about ourselves to be collapsed into the one category of failure. “I'm a failure as a parent. I have regrets because I'm a failure.” So press here for more specificity so that dooming feeling of failure doesn't just sit there. What might you find? Consider three categories that can help provide orientation and accuracy: personal limitation, personal weakness, and personal sin. I'll consider each briefly.
First, think about your limitations. Being limited is something true about us as creatures because it's a feature of how God designed us. He is omniscient. We are not. He is omnipresent. We are not. He lives outside of time. We live within time and have limited time. None of this reflects failure or sin but is a feature of being a limited human being.
Next, weakness. This is not sin, just as limitation is not sin. If I have an uncanny memory and don't need to keep a calendar, then that is a strength. If I struggle to remember dates and must keep a calendar close by at all times and rely on it constantly, then my memory for dates is a weakness. Forgetting is a creaturely weakness, and our weaknesses as parents can and do contribute to scenarios that we come to regret.
Third, personal sin could have contributed to the scenario we regret. Do we sin as parents? Of course. Sadly, all the time. And of course we may come to regret how our sin impacted our kids or harmed our relationship. So keep these three categories in mind, and with each of them, I want to set you on a path that helps you move forward with regrets. Because regrets tend to live with us in our heads and our hearts, swirling, not changing, but here is an alternative, which is to consider, how can I relate? How can I relate to God, and how can I relate to my kids now?
So after gaining more insight into what happened and having considered those three categories, I want to invite you to relate with God by grieving and lamenting with him. With sin, something additional is needed, which is to obey his call to confession and repentance. But with all three, we can grieve and lament. Grieve what happened. Grieve the impact that your weaknesses and limitations had, which is so different than thinking we failed because we have weaknesses and limitations. Grieving and lamenting are faith-filled responses to regrets. But of course they don't make the sad things that happen not sad. Grieving doesn't feel good, and the practice of it doesn't change the nature of what happened, but grieving is honest in that it is saying the sad thing that happened or that I did is sad. And the comfort of grieving is that we are saying the sad thing happened to our God, who is a safe place to come to, who welcomes us, who cares for us. We have him to relate to and draw compassion and understanding from. And I pray you know your Father's heart and care for you as he sees you grieve the past.
Then consider, how can you relate to your kids now? Here, I want to recommend open, honest acknowledgment and communication. You can acknowledge how your weaknesses and limitations had impact on them. You can acknowledge to them how your sin harmed them. You can ask for forgiveness. You can seek opportunities to relate to them differently now. I'll close with one example. If what you regret is missed time from their childhood, you can express that grief of what you missed. Name one or two events in particular that come to your mind. Tell them you are open to hearing their memory of what it was like that you weren't there. Listen if they tell you. Offer appreciation for their openness. Then consider how to move forward differently. Communicate a strong desire to do life with them now and offer suggestions of what that might look like. After that conversation, pursue them. Let them know in your word and in deed your desire and commitment to be different in this area.
One of the deep comforts of our faith is that God is with us now, supplying new mercies to live our lives in Christ as new creatures. This gives us hope, so I encourage you to avail yourself of his mercies and seize the opportunity to do something new. Regrets get us stuck, isolated, and ashamed, but God's Spirit, his love, forgiveness, and acceptance frees us to be honest with ourselves, with him, and with our kids and empowers us to do something new. So walk new, dear parents, in faith that the story isn't over.
