When You Feel Regret, You Get This Miracle

You know, life can get heavy when we’re not even looking. Worries pile up. Regrets loom.  Bitterness builds. I’m grateful to introduce you today to Laurie Davies and her warm-hearted wisdom and wit. Page by page and emotion by emotion Laurie’s book Emotional Hoarding leads us into courageous confrontation with the inner emotions we’ve  crammed into our hearts’ crevices for too long now. Today’s words especially slather a salve over regret, leading us into a long, sweet exhale as we encounter grace as fresh as a white tablecloth.  A grace as Laurie joins us at the farm’s table today.

Guest post by Laurie Davies

When I was a rookie magazine editor, I made an error that literally required stopping the presses.  The next morning, I took an empty box and the want-ads with me to work. I knew I’d be fired. 

Sure enough, in the late morning, a shadow loomed at the entrance to my cubicle. I wheeled  slowly, expecting to find my supervisor holding a pink slip. Instead, there stood Preston V.  McMurry, the owner of the publishing company and my fate. Trying to keep my voice low, I  muttered things about being unable to repay him and how I knew he needed to fire me. “FIRE YOU?” he boomed.

His voice softened. “I didn’t come to fire you. I just put thousands of dollars of training into  you.” 

I will never recover from what happened next. 

“May I?” he asked, pointing to my phone. I pushed back from my desk so he could reach.

“Cancel my one o’clock appointment,” he told his executive assistant. “I’m taking a VIP to  lunch.”

He offered his arm, walked me through campus, tossed my empty box in the dumpster,  and took me to lunch. It was the nicest restaurant I’d ever dined in. It had white tablecloths. 

Grace.

I’m much more apt to nurture others into the lavish grace of God than myself. I think that might  be true for you too. This is because grace is not our first language. 

A few years ago, I interviewed a woman named Emma Torres. Emma was born into a Spanish speaking migrant family and dropped out of school at age thirteen. Braving taunts of “you’re  dumb,” she kept her head down and worked the fields.

Years later, Emma learned English, got  her GED, and earned a bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University. She returned to ASU to  earn her master’s and then started a nonprofit that serves the farm worker community through  healthcare and violence prevention. Many border towns have replicated her model. 

“Not bad for someone who’s dumb,” she said. 

We live in a new kingdom. And we need GSL lessons. Grace as a  Second Language. 

Emma never was dumb. She simply lived in a new country where people speak a different  language. We’re like that. We live in a new kingdom. And we need GSL lessons. Grace as a  Second Language. 

How do we become fluent in grace? Jesus gives us a clue with these familiar words: 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my  yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find  rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28–29) 

I cling to this promise when I limp to Jesus, exhausted. But I used to skip right over that yoke  part. A yoke doesn’t sound like something I want to wear, especially when I’m burdened. It  sounds heavy. However, this is not the case at all, as Jesus’ friend Peter explains in his words to  early Jewish believers: 

“Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples’ necks that  neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we  are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way they are.” (Acts 15:10–11 CSB) 

Do you see it? The yoke Jesus places on us is grace. Yet we lug boxes and want-ads around. 

God takes our free will and wills us to be free.

Like you, I beat myself up sometimes for missing opportunities or turning left instead of right.  Scripture is also packed with women whose stories weren’t regret-free. Leah was fertile and unloved. Rachel was loved and infertile. Hannah didn’t get to help her son pull his first tooth. Sarah spent ninety years waiting. Lot’s daughters? Nature and nurture really messed them up. 

We think we’re supposed to live life like it’s Hasbro’s classic The Game of Life, where players get a college degree, a cool job, a car full of pink and blue pegs, and retirement at Millionaire  Estates.

But this is actual life and sometimes we can’t have kids. Or the blue peg in the front seat  leaves us for a younger pink peg. And Millionaire Estates? Yeah, that’s not happening.

In the mysterious place where God’s sovereignty meets our free will, God is working a big picture story for our lives. He always sees the higher view. He’s a good Author who doesn’t  waste a drop of ink. We might feel like we have, but He does not.

God takes our free will and wills us to be free. 

How does grace fit into all of this? It’s everywhere.

Grace meets us at all the wrong turns and missed chances. Grace spreads a white tablecloth at lunch when our actions deserve a pink slip. We can’t earn it. It simply flows from the heart of a God who loves His pink and blue pegs. 

God understands the realities that held us back from our dreams. He hates the wounding that led  us to rush into relationships. He saw the strongholds that kept us from moving forward. He knows the anxiety that told us to be cautious—so cautious that we could choke on our missed  opportunities. 

And, ready or not, grace is how He deals with us. It’s just how He set it up.

We can push  back, resist Him, and add elevation to our mountain of regret, or we can give in to the grace God  has freely given us. 

It’s a little like sailing. We can set our sails to allow God’s grace to push and whoosh us from  behind. Or we can set sail against it—and as a result, zigzag in Christian action without full  propulsion. This begins to describe a Christian who is just going through the motions. It’s  religious activity without wholehearted surrender.

It’s trying to stay in God’s graces without,  of all things, grace.