How Do We Get Through Our Regrets as Parents?

When Denis travels, things often go awry at home, and that is when we miss him most. I surely wished he’d been home when I struck Sember. It was an honest accident, but what followed was not my best example of how to parent. I wished he was around, so he could say, “Awww, it could have happened to anyone, even me.”

The Forgiveness that Breaks Into the Mistakes We Make

It was Sunday afternoon and our three kids and I went for a bike ride. We wanted to swim at the Y, but it was closed when we got there, so we turned back home. The first intersection we came to was a four-way stop with traffic coming from every direction. Sember became confused about whose turn was next and in fear of oncoming traffic, she suddenly turned her bike into my path and I collided with her and ran over her foot. We quickly dragged our bikes off the road and helped Sember to the side. She sat on the curb crying and holding her foot. The crying went on and on for the longest time, and being the miserable person as I am, I told her to STOP because I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. I forced her to get on her bike and ride home. She made it, but cried most of the way.

Perhaps, like me, other mothers grow immune to their children’s howls and death throes over mere scratches. We are predictably conditioned to ignore some life-threatening injury or disease. It’s just a matter of when. This was my “when.”

The next morning, her foot was swollen and she couldn’t walk, so I took her to the doctor who examined and x-rayed it. He came back into the exam room with the tests, threw the x-ray onto the monitor, suspiciously looked at me, then said, “You didn’t KNOW it could have been broken?” After he cast it for three (THREE!) fractures, I was the one crying. I took her to Wendy’s for lunch, and begged her to forgive me. She did so immediately, without reservation.

I was stunned by her grace. The forgiveness I received in that moment.

 That Grace that Enters the Tears We Cause

There are so many ways to fail as a mother and I’ve probably committed most of them. I don’t nag very much. The trouble is when I do, it’s concentrated to a near lethal dose. I did it to Jerem the other day. He is such a well-intentioned, happy person that to him, it’s doubly shocking when he’s attacked. It had to do with him recklessly spending all his allowance money without regard for his chameleon who needs one lousy cricket per week to survive and which only costs 15 cents. And which pet he wanted desperately and swore always to love and to feed, and which pet was now gasping with starvation. All this illogically led to a lengthy recounting of grievances I had stored up against him. I raved on about the crummy way he leaves tools all over the yard to rust in the rain, the muddy sock balls left at the back door, the newspapers from his route strewn about the garage, etc., etc., etc. In a fury I gave him a quarter and sent him to the store for some crickets.

 It took about fifteen seconds of silence after he quietly left for the echoes of my harangue to return to me. What a wretch, an absolute wretch I am. I knew I had devastated him with this uncontrolled attack. I ran to the garage to see if I could catch him before he rode off on his bike. I found him crouched in the corner, his head in his hands, crying. How could I mend it? (Not that he shouldn’t learn to be responsible.) I owed him an enormous apology for unloading on him like that. How could I forgive myself as he forgave me?

There are times when I am sorry to be me. If I had not known what Paul said about himself, What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? and if I had not known his answer: Thanks be to God—through our Lord Jesus Christ... (Romans 7:24), I would give up altogether. Thanks to my children who have taught me much about spiritual growth.

Again and again we pick ourselves up. The process of confession and receiving forgiveness goes on and on to the end of life, or until Jesus returns and we are re-made to be like him forever.

[Excerpt from Margie Haack, This Place: A Few Notes from Home (Square Halo Books, 2021)].