Regret Produced Something Beautiful

I knew poverty, and I knew plenty

Need

My mom says my grandmother used to make fun of me when I was little because my parents put me in boy clothes, meaning they didn’t always dress me in frills. I don’t know if this is truth or how my grandmother made my mom feel. When my mom and dad got together, they were two poor souls who had nothing but love and one another.  Maybe my mom felt as if she did not have enough money to make me a girlie girl.

In middle school, mom told me how she wished she hadn’t married dad. She told me her secrets. Hers were so heavy, I rarely gave her mine. In my little girl mind, she regretted me too. Over the years, I’ve carried things long before I was supposed to.

Plenty

After high school, dad had worked himself half way to the grave. I knew what it was like to have a dad come home on the weekend from his construction job and hear him and mom yell continuously til he left. We were needy of stability but high on things.

I knew poverty, and I knew plenty.

Our Wants intersect our Laments

I heard my mom in law say she regretted her first husband, and I told her she wouldn’t have a son or me a husband had that marriage not happened. Regret begat my family.

Need

Sometimes, I have to tell myself that it’s okay to look pretty and fashionable. Others don’t seem to carry the idea like a sin like I do. I wonder if it’s a remnant of my mom’s regret of not dressing me frilly. (Plenty of times she did. There are pictures to prove it.)

Plenty

Sometimes though, I throw broken things away. I am rich enough to throw away the mop if it doesn’t work or the dreamlight stuffed animal if it fades. Just flat-out throw them away, because we’ve known excess and have more than we need. Simplicity says to keep the good and throw out the unnecessary. So we do.

The Luxuries of the Rich and Poor

The rich man doesn’t have the luxury of making do with a broken thing. He can and may choose to throw broken things away.

When end’s don’t meet, however, the poor makes broken things work – he has this luxury. Somehow, the broken things become more than enough.

The luxury of the rich man is to is to bury himself in regret and lament, wishing he’d done things differently. [Side note: At least, this is something I do, and I feel convicted that I do it in my excess of time or desire for something other than what I have. So many times this year, the Lord has reminded me of Paul sitting in prison in pure content. If I am honest, I am rarely content. I wish for something better because I have the luxury of wishing. Instead, I should be finding my joy and strength in the Lord and doing what He has put before me to do.]

The poor man uses what he has, instead of crying over spilt milk. Sure, he laments, but he doesn’t have time to mire himself in lament. He has to survive.

Recently, I’ve been exposed to the stories of Ugandan women from Lulu Tree blog stories and Noonday Collection. The stories struck me how Americans are vastly different in the way we think about what we produce, particularly in children. Ugandan women, for example, often assume they will produce children who become thieves. They know that poverty leads their children in ways they do not want them to go. They keep this in mind when they think about how many they will have. Americans don’t generally believe we will produce thieves in our children. If they do turn out poorly, we blame ourselves and regret what we have done wrong than who they’ve become. Ugandan women don’t have time to blame themselves. They know what poverty produces. What if we looked at our own soul poverty as opportunity for the Lord to poor in?

Do you see how regret is an American opulence? Maybe it is just me, but it is something the Lord is convicting me of this year.

How these Needs translate to our Brokenness

What if instead of throwing our broken things away, we are meant to use them? Maybe God doesn’t mean us to sin or make mistakes, but maybe He wants us to use them for our good instead of lament them or regret them or languish over them leaving us bound by them. Maybe our broken things, our regrets, are meant to lead us back to the fact that He was broken for us? What if the way to Him was through the broken? And just on the other side is the joy we long for.

If I dwelt on my mom’s regret or my mom in law’s regret, I’d stay bound in worthlessness, and I’d feel as if my only hope was the lives I’ve already seen lived. But Jesus is my hope. He makes good on our regrets. Maybe Jesus is the only way to make any sense of any of the broken things. Maybe it is through this learning to be content as Paul was content through the broken, through the plenty, and the need, that we learn to know who Jesus is and who we are.

In my story, regret produced something beautiful – my family. We are not a perfect family. We can choose to take the murky path of the past or the hope filled one of Christ. In Him, regret can be made beautiful.

This post is one in a 31 day series of posts called, “Broken into Beautiful.” You may read all the posts in this series by clicking the graphic below.