Marilu Thomas “Backpacking or Grad School?”

Luke 9: 51-62

My husband and I have a problem. We are both bibliophiles and we moved into his parents’ home with the library of family books. This was the week we purged—a bit. I found a book that was my father-in-law’s. He was a very successful but quiet and somewhat intense man, with a love for poetry. I opened the book to this page—you may recognize it. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both.” Robert Frost and The Road Not Taken. As I’ve aged, the roads not taken seem to gain mythic proportions, filling me with longing regret for past decisions and missteps.

Psychologist Amy Summerville, the former head of the Regret Lab at Miami University, says that regret is the most common negative emotion that we experience in our lives. She describes regret in two parts: an unpleasant feeling and a counterfactual thought based on the pattern that says, “I could have done something differently, and that would have produced a better outcome.” According to the research at the Regret Lab, our four biggest regrets in life are about Education, Career, Romance, and Parenting.

Here are some of the regrets Dr. Summerville has recorded:

I regret not taking the lead in a school play in high school because I listened to my friends.

I regret not seeing my estranged father before he died because I didn’t know what to say.

I regret saying something dumb in that job interview.

I regret not saying something when I should have.

I regret accepting that job.

I regret not going to Grad School and backpacking in Europe instead.

I regret backpacking in Europe instead of going to Grad School.

I regret having the affair.

I regret getting drunk last night or on that night or so many nights.

I regret mistreating someone earlier in my life.

You might be regretting coming to church this morning to hear me bring up all your regrets!

Regret is a form of judgment- an imagined alternative where we negatively judge the outcome. Do you remember the movie Sliding Doors? Gwyneth Paltrow misses the train, and in a parallel version, she doesn’t miss the train and so we get to see both outcomes. Isn’t this what we all want? To see the outcome before we decide before we commit before we believe before we trust? We hold ourselves accountable for something that is outside of our control. We are judge and jury in the courtroom of the road not taken.

Regret can also be about wanting to be our old self—a younger self, a self without this hardship or this sadness or this pain. Abigail Brougher shares on Mockingbird this week that she has seen Pinterest quotes that say, “The you before kids is still there.” Her retort is, “I’m sorry Instagram, but no, she is not. Or if she is, she is dormant: she has been starved.” Abigail goes on to question us, “Have you ever asked yourself, is the me before the trauma really still there? Is the me before the career change really still there? Is the me before the loss really still there?... I’ve wrestled with this. I’ve let it be the knitting hook that wove knot after knot in my stomach. “ Who hasn’t felt this way, asked these questions in our heads? Felt the knot in our stomachs? How did I let myself slip away into this me I don’t recognize?

In our Lukan gospel today, Jesus says “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I don’t know how to plow, but I think I get the gist of what Jesus is getting at here. The issue is not the plow but the looking back. When you are doing anything and looking back you are not where your feet are. We are always prepared for the past, seeing what we did wrong there and vowing to not do it again. The ‘if onlys’ and the ‘coulda, woulda, shouldas’ haunt us so we look back for some way of redeeming our path ourselves. This is the law at its most enticing and persuasive. Surely, we can fix those rows we’ve plowed too shallowly or too deeply, too intemperately, while our current rows become tomorrow’s regrets.

My swirling regrets these days seem to be about my mother. For most of my life, I had a grudge against her for things done and left undone. She gave my brothers more. She went back to college when I was in middle school and started smoking. She was eccentric and off-putting and sometimes weird. My mother Rose died the year before the pandemic. When we were in the hospital with her during the last days of her life, I learned that she had a very serious mental illness and had had it all of her adult life, coping as best she could with five children and life as a talented but unconventional artist. I was 60 years old when I learned this about her. It’s our family’s version of Stranger Things. I regret the times I was harsh, judgmental, and unforgiving, not knowing that she was suffering mental anguish. I cannot fix these plowed rows of my life because I can’t let go of the plow. Jesus is the only place I can go with this one. He knew her and he knows me and He has always known our Stranger Things.

Back to Abigail and her ‘you before kids.’ She writes, “It’s the idea that over the course of our lives, the miracle of grace pushes the needle more often in the direction of wisdom and maturity. It’s the idea that God does not leave us where we are, that the accumulated sedimentary deposits of time have been molded and shaped into something new. Leaving an old self behind is not something to regret, because sometimes letting the old things die is precisely how we move toward what we need to become.”

I believe Jesus sowed seeds of forgiveness and redemption into that soil between my mother and me, timed for some future moment of redemption. More will be revealed. God’s timing is not my timing. God’s view of the field of my life and your life is from a cosmic loving place. It is a view from the Cross of one-way love for me and my mother and you and your regrets. Christ has no regrets for what He has done for you and will absorb your regrets into Himself. It has always been His hand on the plow. We’re just kidding ourselves. We have no plow! When you look back from the plow you realize you have plowed nothing, that God is the only one who plows anything in your life.

I’ll leave you with this prayer from Amy Carroll:

Lord, we come to You needing release from regrets. Instead of wallowing in despair, help us trust in Your powerful, ongoing work. Instead of agonizing over our imperfections, help us look to You for perfecting. In all things, help us turn our regrets over to You, our Redeemer. In Jesus Name, Amen.