Disappointment With Myself
Of all life’s disappointments, disappointment with ourselves can be among the most devastating. Whether body image, stupidity, or just that obnoxious inner critic, we are regularly “cancelling” ourselves because of things we say or do. Disappointment with self is the third and final post in a series that has touched upon disappointment with God and disappointment with the Church.
No Regrets = No Growth
I was at a conference where the speaker referred to something William Borden wrote on his deathbed. Borden was heir to the Borden Dairy fortune and chose to be a missionary instead of running the family business. In his final moments he wrote inside his Bible, “No Regrets.” It sounds like a Successories poster; a rallying cry designed to inspire baldfaced confidence. As I’ve pondered regrets, I’ve come to realize that it’s my regrets that have spawned my growth. A person without regrets is someone hasn’t learned from their mistakes. To face disappointment with the idiotic things we’ve said or done is an invitation to learn from them and to change. I don’t know Borden’s full story and I am sure he had many admirable qualities, but to boast that one has no regrets at life’s end strikes me as someone blind to their mistakes. Regrets are the headwaters of maturity and without them we are consigned to spiritual, emotional and intellectual stagnation.
Parenting While Young
By 21 I was married, and by 27 I’d begun my parenting journey. I didn’t really have the life experience nor the emotional intelligence to parent or partner well. Now, at 59, I feel like I’m at the right place in life to begin. But that’s not how life works. We marry and start having kids long before we’re mature enough to do so. I look with disappointment on my early days as husband and father. I wish I had known how to communicate better. I wish I didn’t have as many emotional triggers. I wish I had been a better listener. I was too inconsistent in my parenting, too much of a pushover. Other times I was too strict. I’m disappointed that at times I thought corporal punishment was the best way to shape a child’s behavior. Looking back to our early years of adulthood is bound to elicit disappointment. At least I hope it does, if it doesn’t, we’ve become stuck in adolescence. I cannot change the bad parenting or poor partnering of my 20s and 30s, but I can apologize for it and grow from it.
A Nuanced Faith
The Church is messed up, in part, because I am messed up, since I am part of the Church. When I look back at my 20-something, black-and-white, naive faith I am a little embarrassed by some of my conclusions. My faith was pretty immature for the first couple of decades, and looking back on those immature convictions I can see why some have become jaded or left the faith altogether. Others have become unable or unwilling to re-examine their youthful faith convictions. They’ve become stiff and graceless. I want a faith that has been tested by experience and made more generous and mature. When you first fall in love, that love is novel and more like infatuation. But 35 years of marriage allows for maturity and depth. When I became a serious Christian at age eighteen, there was a wonderful naiveite to my faith. It was uncomplicated, but it was also shallow. Forty years of God-love has hopefully brought some thoughtfulness and depth. My faith involved its share of fights with God, of slammed doors, of deep conversations. It’s come with seasons of passion, times of joy and dark nights of silence. I refuse to choose between a jaded faith and a superficial one. Disappointment with my adolescent faith has provided the compost in which to grow something rich.
Conclusion
Disappointment with God, the Church and our own shortcomings is a doorway. Rejecting God, Church or self are the easy paths. They’re cheap shots. Reflection, grace and wrestling with your disappointment represent a far more difficult journey, but it’s a path that leads out of our adolescent self-absorption and into a grounded maturity.
Thanks for your honesty Scott. Sometimes we need to show ourselves a little grace. With you in the journey.
For me, disappointments, bad decisions, etc have been springboards for growth and learning. Knowing that each one has shaped me and resulted in who I have become (am becoming) leaves me cherishing them, not regretting them. If I failed to learn from them or make amends or change my course as a result, then perhaps I’d feel regret. As parents, we do the best we can with what we know IN THAT MOMENT. The same grace I grant my own parents, I also share with myself. As they say, live and learn.I believe that we stop living when we stop learning. I’ll make plenty more bad decisions, God willing. I hope to learn until my last breath and then, like Mr. Borden, look back on my life with gratitude for every bit – even the hard parts.
Thanks for these reflections, Barb.
I resonate with your blog 100%. I like the idea of my past becoming compost to grow new things in the future. Thanks for the ability to convey hard things into meaningful words.
Thanks for the affirmation, Bill. Using disappointment with my shortcomings as a club with which to bludgeon myself is no more helpful than using disappointment with the Church as a club with which to bludgeon her. Bludgeoning in general is just not a good idea.
Nice post.
If I remember correctly, William Borden had put that in his Bible as he was dying in Egypt en route to being a missionary in China, and I think that he was saying that he did not regret his decision to leave a life of wealth to follow the Lord even though it lead to his death at such a young age.
Thanks for your words. I’m curious about your comment about “no regrets”. While it’s possible that such a statement reflects a lack of teachability, it could easily also reflect an acceptance of one’s mistakes as a part of the growing process. For example, if I look at my life from one direction it’s full of regret. I wish I’d finished grad school. I regret taking on a big project at a certain season of life. I regret investing decades in this or that thing that didn’t end well. I regret saying that stupid thing. But, looked at another way, the statement “no regrets,” sums up my experience. If I had to choose again between grad school and being home and financially responsible for my children, I’d choose the same way (no regrets). While leading a large project through a particular season of life was painful and difficult, it was a context in which I learned about myself and about leadership in ways that might have otherwise been inaccessible (no regrets). While I lament the pain of decades that feel like wasted investment, I’m comforted in knowing that my choices grew out of a sincere (even if misguided) sense of love for God and desire to serve my neighbor (no regrets). While I regret feeling like a fool or experiencing a loss of trust because of something I said or posted, I’m grateful that I’m slowly learning self and social awareness (no regrets).
Hey Carter and Jason. Points taken. I debated adjusting the section about regret to suggest there is lack of regret for the difficult things from which we grow – even our mistakes. I also thought about including the verse “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” (II Cor. 7:10).
Alas, a 500-800 word blog is pitifully poor to explore something as layered as disappointment. You are correct (both of you). Hard things have happened and hard choices made which I don’t regret. But I do regret (and wish I could change) many things I said and did which were not very godly and damaged myself and others – even if, in God’s mercy, there was redemption.
I’m deeply grateful to have had you in my life these 27 years, Scott. I experience the breadth of God’s mercy when I’m with you. It makes me feel safe. And brave. And I love what you’ve shared here. I’ve often said that one of the greatest joys of following Jesus is the way He takes the sting out of our regrets by a promise that He can work all things for our good. Hoping and striving to live a life I won’t regret is a guide for me that I didn’t ask for. Maybe my dad passed it on to me. But God’s promise to work things for my good helps it not become its own form of perfectionism. In some ways aging is just awesome. I loved my 30s while I was in them, but I wouldn’t trade the years and lessons I have under my belt now for anything!