You Couldn't Have Known

I lied to my daughter yesterday. Not intentionally… I just spoke a careless sentence that I realized immediately wasn’t true.

We were sitting in the kitchen while she ate her usual pre-workday breakfast of sourdough toast, and our mini Goldendoodle jumped to beg for a bite, scratching her legs in the process. “Bodie, get down,” she scolded. 

And in a flash my thoughts flew to our other dog, our Morkie, my buddy, the pup we lost just a few weeks ago. “Someday you’ll miss him begging for toast,” I said. “I regret every time I told Prophet not to sit on my lap.”

But even as I spoke the words aloud, my brain corrected me: I don’t believe in regrets. 

What I really meant was, I wish I’d not been so bothered by Prophet’s demands for attention. By his constant barking at the mail truck. His annoying habit of licking the couch. He was quirky and loving and possessive — a little Napoleon of a terrier who thought he owned the world. And everything I thought I wanted to change about him is now something I miss so much, my breath catches in my throat just thinking about it.

So is that regret? Is that really what fills the cracks of our grief? Or is it more likely an awareness that our blessings have actually been disguised as annoyances all along, and the more we wish them away, the more we’ll realize we’ve lost when it leaves us?

I remember decades ago, when my grandmother died, my aunt beat herself up for one tiny decision. Grandma had called her, and she didn’t pick up the phone. She was too busy, didn’t want to talk — a split-second choice like all the other choices we make every day with no consequence. And my grandmother passed away suddenly just days later. How was my aunt supposed to know that would be her last chance to hear her mother’s voice?

Regrets occur in hindsight. And they cause us to question our decisions, to mourn our actions, to wish we’d done something different, or been someone else in that moment. But to prevent a regret? We’d need the sovereignty of God. We’d need the ability to see into the future as only He can, and He didn’t give us that power. 

We can’t mourn something we were never privy to possess.

And that’s why I don’t believe in regrets. I believe in learning from mistakes, aiming to see and appreciate the blessings in front of us. But as faulty humans we are not expected to do it all perfectly. We won’t. We’re incapable of it. So to bury ourselves in the heartache of regret is like saying we should have known how to prevent an outcome, which is simply untrue.

To relieve ourselves of regret is to trust that God did not make a mistake when He gave us limited foresight. And to believe Jesus meant it when He died on the cross for every mistake we’d ever make.

I don’t know what kind of regret you’re wrestling with. If you’re a “level five” woman like me, with more good years behind than ahead — years of marriage, parenting, work, ministry, friendships — then chances are you’d like to erase a few decisions made over your lifetime so far. But we can’t go back. We can only move forward. And God invites us to do it without guilt.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:1, 28)

Let’s take Him up on His invitation, amen? 

We can live free from the burden of wishing we’d done things differently when we realize God isn’t wagging his finger at us for messing up. Each of us has failed many times. That’s part of being human. And so is looking to Jesus to fulfill what we can’t.

So no more regrets. Let’s replace them with wisdom to recognize our blessings, gratitude for God’s forgiveness on the days when we don’t, and hard-fought trust that He’ll make good on every choice. That’s His promise. And I’m believing it. Will you?