Learning From Regret

Instead of waiting to see if you measure up, start letting everyone else know that they don’t have to.” Melissa Camara Wilkins

I suspect anyone who pays attention AT ALL and lives long enough can find one or two things to regret. I for one wish my little girl self had understood that it was not healthy for a childhood accident to be met with punishment without first checking for broken bones and glass shards. Now, I can regret not having a different experience and ruminate over it (which I have done) or I can lean in and allow my past to be my past. I can learn new ways to understand it, which is helpful. I can also use it as a lesson for how I want to live my life.

I can WISH for a different experience or I can choose to give others the gift of an experience I have learned is valuable.

I have a friend with abandonment issues. He has reacted to this problem by making sure he leaves relationships at the first sign of turbulence. Better to be the one who walks out than the one who is left behind. Lately he has started to question his choices. He’s wondering if maybe this is not living in a true way.

Maybe, he thinks, he could learn how to be the kind of friend who sticks close as a brother because he knows what it is like to be left behind. I like the way he thinks.

Unlikely Love

God has given us so many incredible examples of unlikely love. Take for example Ruth and Naomi. Ruth came from a different religious background than Naomi, her mother-in-law. After their shared affection dies (Ruth’s husband, Naomi’s son) Naomi graciously offers Ruth the gift of freedom. She invites her to return home to her family of origin. This would enable Ruth to find another husband, maybe even one who lived near her family.

Naomi faces an uncertain future but Ruth refuses to bail on her. Ruth says this -

“Do not press me to leave you and to turn back from your company, for wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.

Ruth 1:16

But this is highly speculative - Ruth is a “foreigner” in a land that does not like immigrants - especially as marriage material. Going home for Naomi, now without sons, in no means guarantees a warm reception and provision for care. In the end all is well.

But Ruth does not know that when she chooses to be a good friend to Naomi.

Good friends make decisions that are often NOT in their best interest in deference to the higher call of love. I for one have been blessed with friends who have shown me that kind of love; I try to be that kind of friend back. But there is no guarantee that I can and will be a good friend. They love me anyway.

Good friends take the right kind of risks - they risk personal comfort in favor of brotherly love. They risk awkward moments of disagreement in favor of loss of connection. They risk conflict in favor of abandonment.

These are not easy times and yet we must remember this: it has never been easy to be a good friend. I wonder if we might pray for all of us to be better friends now that we have so many stark reminders of the potential for loss as a result of disease and intolerance.