I Wish I Could Go Back

Regretting immaturity and grasping a new privilege

Photo by Michael Skok on Unsplash

My second job out of college was at a local middle school. I was a fresh and hopeful newlywed, tasked with an after-school program for a motley group of students forced to join by either grades or family. I wasn’t prepared. While I worked to jump in mid-year into a struggling program, I gleaned wisdom from the volunteer teachers and did the best that I could. In my brightest moments, I helped students through their math problems, and walked through various lesson plans. In my stupidest, I shoved myself and my pregnant belly between two much-larger-than-me eighth graders about to get into a pushing match. (No, I never did that again.)

In the midst of that semester I got to know a few of the students that showed up to listen (or not listen) to me every weekday after school. They began to let me in and share about their home lives. Some did so openly, by telling me about the joint custody they had to dance between or an upsetting new cancer diagnosis. Others explained this more passively—by the hateful words that tumbled from their mouth that I knew could have only been first received.

It’s been over ten years since I pulled into the employee parking lot and walked anxiously into that school building, but I can’t stop thinking of those kids. Their memories haunt me for many reasons, but partly because I feel so much regret for what I should have said and done in that job. While I’m certainly no parenting expert today, as a mom of a now-teenager and two boys, I still know so much more than the clueless twenty-four-year-old who tried to control that classroom. Besides maturity and parental wisdom, the Lord has grown me spiritually since that time. I understand more of his nature, his word, and the hope of the gospel.

I’m not sure I said anything terribly wrong to my students, but my regret lies in all that I didn’t say. I think back to their questions, and wish I could give better and fuller answers. I think of their searching faces, and I wish I could ask questions back and point them more clearly to a greater hope. But hindsight is always 20/20.

You likely have experienced these same kinds of regrets. Maybe it was a conversation with a co-worker, an old neighbor, or a past friendship. They were encounters with people who only passed through your orbit for a season, but it’s a season you wished you could get a do-over. These feelings are inescapable, for if Christ is conforming us more and more to his image, then that means there are periods in our lives when we were less like him. We were less kind, wise, gentle, or patient. There were times when we didn’t have the knowledge or the grace or the love that we would have later.

As we wrestle through these moments, it’s important to remember that God isn’t surprised by our limitations. He knows the “measure of faith” he’s allotted to us and the ways in which it will grow and change by his Spirit (Rom 12:3). Still, he asks us to take whatever he’s given—whether it feels like five talents of faith, two talents of faith, or one talent of faith—and to offer it up to him (Matt 25:15). Yes, we’ll likely look back and discover moments we wished we would have handled differently. For the true sins we can find a salve in Christ, who forgives what we have done and even what “we have left undone”.¹ But for every other regret based in simple immaturity, we can find hope by trusting the guiding hand of God who placed us in those relationships with purpose. We can rest to know we were never meant to be the Savior, but one more frail and faithful sower within God’s harvest.

When we move on from shame and guilt, we’ll find on more opportunity to keep sowing: We can pray.

I may not have been wise enough or strong enough to shoulder the burdens of my students thirteen years ago, but I can bring their names before the throne of grace today. I can beg the Lord to protect them, draw near to them, and comfort them. I can pray they may know the love of Christ, his faithfulness throughout their sufferings, and the hope of life found in his presence. And I count this opportunity as my great privilege.

These prayers aren’t an act of penance, but a worthy calling the Lord has provided for each of us—to bear the names of specific image bearers before the Father. Our family, friends, church, and current circle of relations likely already fill up our prayers, but what about the people God sovereignly ordained to pass through your life’s path? Of course we won’t be able to remember every lost interaction or relationship, but I believe God quickens our hearts to remember some. Our old neighbor, student, or friend might be one precious calling to grasp on to. What an honor, to quietly carry their names and their lives on our lips—to beseech the God of Heaven on their behalf as the years dwindle even their memory of us.

No one can go back in time. Instead, we can look forward to our present calling and our future hope. For one day, we may get to throw our arms around our former students, co-workers, or friends in the very presence of the Savior we prayed so earnestly for them to know.

My first book, Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows Us Spiritually is coming out next May, and I’d just love to have you join me as we discover all the ways God uses our hobbies to bring us to worship.

1. This particular quote is from the Book of Common Prayer, and it’s truth is discussed in James 4:17.