Recently, I’ve been thinking about regrets. We all have regrets to some extent. Some people don’t have very many. It seems they knew what they wanted to do in life, how to do it, and they accomplished every single thing.
I did not or at least have not yet. I was never pushed by my parents to accomplish anything. It was assumed I’d go to college, but there was no talk about where or what I wanted to study. If your parents guided you through those choices, you are blessed!
Looking back I feel like I just floated through life. I went with the flow of things, letting life just happen instead of making it happen. I want more than that for my girls!
As a parent, I probably have the most regrets. I wish I had the faith back then that I have now. I wish I had focused more on God and family in our household. My girls are great due to God, influences, and a lot of prayer, but I could have, should have, been a better mother to them.
We are all messed up by our parents because they aren’t perfect people either. We come out of childhood with issues for one reason or another. We can place blame on our parents, or we can become an adult and move on from it. We can raise our kids better than we were raised.
The regrets of past sins…we all have ’em! No one of us is perfect. Only through Christ are we so white as snow.
It’s hard sometimes to get past the regrets, but I think we have to look at it like Paul did in Philippians 3:
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Press on!!
Yes! This rings so true for me as my son begins his senior year. It feels like “my chance” with him is coming to a close. Though I do realize I’ll still be an influence on his adulthood, I fret over missed opportunities when he was freshly minted and so impressionable.
I have to be careful to not wallow in the what ifs and if onlys.
It’s a great life irony that we are so often still immature in our discipleship when our children are very young, plus we get distracted and even consumed by the busyness of mothering children. In middle age, I am finding a deeper relationship with Christ, but my son is nearly grown and moving forward on his own path. Great post, Laurel! I’m glad I’m not alone in this thinking!