Regret Redux (Day 4)

My book If Only: Letting Go Of Regret released a year ago. I’ve been humbled and gratified by the wonderful response from readers and reviewers. A number have told me the book helped them recognize, confront and release their own long-standing regrets. This week, in celebration of God’s faithfulness, I’m re-running some of my favorite posts from the last year on the topic of regret.

What would a birthday party be without presents? Click here before tomorrow – Friday, June 26th  – at midnight Central time to send me the name and U.S. snail mail address of a person who’d benefit from receiving a gift copy If Only. (That person can even be you!)

My friend Libby survived a very traumatic childhood and was determined to give her own kids a better life than she’d ever had. Libby told me after she came to faith in Christ as an adult, she and her husband were looking for the kind of structure in which their new faith could be protected and nurtured. This led the family to join a rigid, fundamentalist congregation. While this greenhouse church offered a safe place to begin their journey with Christ, it also was the incubator for one of Libby’s greatest regrets. She shares here story here:

Michelle and I were having lunch not long ago when I mentioned one of my own regrets: sending my kids to an ultra conservative, legalistic school.

When it came to education we had several options. However, my husband and I had not been raised in Christian homes. In fact, in some ways, they were the very antithesis of such; think “in a barn by wolves”. So as shiny new believers, we thought we needed all the help we could get.

Our conservative, reactionary church led us to believe that public schools were hostile to anything Christian, so we turned to the private sector. Not prepared to home school, we picked SCS as a place to educate our kids. Our thinking? Old fashion conduct policies plus old time religion– what could possibly go wrong? Apparently, plenty; I was going to find out the hard way just how callously the school was going to try to force my round peg kids to fit into their square-hole expectations. [Read more]