Regret

  Amid the cluttered kitchen I stand, my hands washing dishes, my mind picking over decisions made.  This one was good, another unknown, and these, well, they lie heavy on my heart like a pile of rocks, and I weep over them.  I mourn the innocent blindness of youth and first love and all the sorrow that followed.  How I wish my eyes would have been opened, my ears would have heard, that I would have been wise then.  Sorrow floods me as I mourn those choices.

 But the path of regret is treacherous, filled with potholes, a ravine on one side, a steep cliff threatening avalanche the other.  For to mourn my decisions is to reject the blessings that they brought.  The same bad decisions brought me my darling first born, my dancer, my artist, that whirlwind of ideas and energy?  How can I wish to never have dated her father when through her birth I first grasped grace?   When it was because of her that I first exchanged words with the man I later exchanged vows with?  He first fell in love with the sweet baby, not the young mama with the spiky purple hair.  That sweet girl loved him back, turned to his voice while "walking" on unsteady baby legs, so that the broken spiky girl learned to trust, to love and to be loved.  Love came, two more babies came, and healing comes in deluges and sprinkles, but always continuing. So then how can I have regrets?

 I weep over the pain, the brokenness that I have caused.  I weep over the consequences of my sin, for the little girl who has to bear them.  But I rejoice in God's goodness, in how He has made all things new, taken my shame and turned it into a beautiful love story.  I cannot separate out my life, say this is good and this is bad.  I made bad choices, I was so deeply wounded, but oh the beauty that has come from such a sad beginning!
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