Living with Regret and Learning to Be Gentle

I embarrassed my son last night.  I know, I know--parents always say, "We are supposed to embarrass our kids.  It's our job."  But this was different.  This was beyond that; this was devastating to him; this was something I could have prevented and I didn't.  He wanted--he needed last night to be wonderful, and I ruined it.  

I knew it then and I knew it this morning.  It broke--correction--it breaks my heart over and over.  I apologized; we talked; he said he forgave me.  I don't forgive myself.  I'm living with regret and shame that I cannot shake off my shoulders.  That's not true; it's been shaken off my shoulders and entered into my body where it joins the other incidents I believe are parental failures, the other incidents I can't release, and they tangle themselves together into one and course through my body entering my heart and my brain where they wreak havoc with my emotions--with my sanity.

These incidents become a part of me.  I carry them with me, and I live with regret.  I can play them in my mind like a silent movie that never ends--the time I yelled at Sarah Katherine when she wouldn't get in the bathtub; the time I told Christopher I was ashamed of him; the time William specifically asked me not to bring up a subject with someone and I did anyway; the time I didn't come home from dinner right away and Caroline ended up in emergency surgery--the movie loops through my mind over and over.  I live with regret, and I live with fear.  My greatest fear--losing one or all of my children.  "Losing" be either through a death or abandonment.  I fear that I am never enough, that consciously or unconsciously I am damaging them.

Okay, before I get overly dramatic--let's just say I am a well functioning adult, but some days, some days these incidents, this movie, these fears overtake me and affect everything.  A couple of hours after my tearful time with my son,  I went to pick out floors. While there I received an email about some work I was doing and asking me to rework some things.  I lost it.  Seriously, standing in the middle of a flooring store picking out new floors for our still wrecked house from the June 9th (yes seriously JUNE 9th and no work has been done) I burst into tears.  That poor woman--she was just trying to help me pick out tile--she looked at me and then around the showroom and said, "I know this is overwhelming, but we can work through it all."  (I suspect the next time someone makes an appointment to come in with an insurance claim from a flood, she's going to call in sick...)

So as today comes to an end, I've been thinking--a lot.  I've been thinking there are probably many people who live with regret everyday.  People who everyday have their own silent movies playing in their minds, and sometimes those movies take over--sometimes those movies become their reality and they respond to something totally unrelated with that movie as their reality.  And then we judge...

As a person of faith, I know we are to take our failures--real and perceived--and lay it at the feet of God.  We are to lay down those movies, walk away and be released.  I believe that; I preach that; I repeat it over and over to people, but I myself know I often turn around and run back where I grab that parcel back up and pack it back into my identity backpack that I try to define and control myself forgetting that God has already taken care of it.  I wonder how many other people do the same?

I received a second email today--from the same cohort.  This email said, "Please be gentle with yourself and know you have the love and support of a community that cares deeply about you."  She didn't know about the other, but she knew how I responded to the first email--and she cared.  I keep rereading that email trying to give it permission to splice the film in my head.  I'm trying, and I hope one day it will work.

Tonight as I'm getting ready to sleep, as I'm getting ready to rejoin a community tomorrow who I have grown to love and I believe has begun to love me, I can't help but wondering.  Who else tonight needs to be told to be gentle with themselves?  I was told to be gentle with myself; I tell people to be gentle with themselves; but I wonder, what if we as a community, if we as people were gentle with others first?  What if we were gentle with others even if we didn't know what movies were playing in their heads but just because being gentle was the way to show the love of God.

Could it be that by being gentle with others, by others being gentle with us. we could learn to be gentle with ourselves?