Where Regret Never Ends

My parents have been married for almost 40 years. Like all couples, they have had their shares of ups and downs. I remember as a kid during the most unnerving of verbal arguments sitting at the top of the stairs with my brother and listening to every word and wondering if everything was simply hanging by a thread about to snap. You have so little control as a child, over your life and environment, that whatever control you do have you totally leverage as a way of coping with, well, life.

For some children and young adults, cutting is a way of physically 'bleeding' emotional pain; for others, eating disorders manifest themselves as offering a mondium of control when you feel like you have none. 

For me, as a kid, worry was my way of controlling things. As has been said before, worry is self-reinforcing: if you worry about something enough, and the bad thing never happens, you can come to think that your worry was what prevented the bad thing from happening. I.e., worry works. It doesn't of course, but for a kid, the path of that psychological closed loop can weave its way into your psyche like a Kevlar thread. My anxiety of 'bad stuff that's just around the corner' played out physically in G.I. disruptions, and worrying about your parent's marriage doesn't help.

But my parents always assured my brothers and I that divorce was never an option, no matter how bad things got, and I believed them. They were not especially religious, but I almost appreciated that more, because the seriousness with which they took their vows of "for better or for worse" went beyond merely a religious conviction. They affirmed, by their actions of keeping them, that vows meant something, something eternal and binding but also something that marriage as a natural institution extends beyond a isolated sphere, the way St. Paul speaks of the the "law written on hearts."

Even at the lowest points, when you are gritting your teeth and staying together through the storms because that's just what you do and can't see to the other side, temptation rears its sweet and ugly head and can become acute. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus demands his sailors tie him to the mast of his ship and that they plug their own ears, lest they hear the siren's songs and run the boat aground. Odysseus does not plug his ears since he is curious about the siren song; were it not for being bound, he would have succumbed to their deadly embrace. 

As a result of gutting it out during those trying periods, they can now taste the fruit in their golden years, which, as I can see from my vantage point as a son, is sweet: their marriage is strong, they are a good team and complement one another well, and they are enjoying retirement together. I don't think it can be overstated that their staying together gave my brothers and I a solid foundation on which to build our own lives--financially, emotionally, and psychologically.

But what if, during a fit of frustration, one had threatened divorce, and the bullwarks that reinforced their bond was not as strong as they were then? What if my mom went to girlfriends during one of my father's episodes and they flippantly advised her, "you have to get out. You have to take care of yourself, and this is no way to live." Or what if my dad just decided the pressure of married and family life was too much, and filed himself, abjugating himself from the responsibility? I don't think people realize the magnitude of planting such seeds of such temptations in other people's lives, and their long-lasting consequences. 

I work on a college campus. I don't know how many young mothers there are of the tens of thousands of students, but I don't think it's very large. At all. I have never seen a visibly pregnant college student on campus; not to say it doesn't exist, I just haven't seen it. Which makes me think that there a lot--a lot--of young women who are walking around who may have had an abortion.

Women procure abortions for different reasons, but I suspect underlying them all is the thought "I can't do this." I can't disrupt my life like this; I can't support a baby financially; My parents will disown me. I have no support." Whether or not that is true is unforeseen, but the fear is real and fear motivates us to do things that we often regret.

Time magazine reported that 95% of women who have gotten an abortion have not regretted the choice. I wonder. I wonder because I dont' think that statistic tells the whole truth, and it belies the layers upon layers of psychological compensation that many women often employ to come to terms with their choice. Choosing life is not an easy choice for a young woman today, especially for college students and especially when the culture at large dos not support such a choice. It's a narrow way that leads to life in the world today. But like staying together during the darkest times of marriage, I have to believe that the moment one choices to step out onto the wide road and end a life is a pivotal point that so much else hinges on that we might not see, and never allows for a rainbow to form.

I think deep down, deep deep down, in the dark of night when alone with themselves, many post-abortive women think and wonder 'what if?'. What if I hadn't listened to all my friends that told me I had no choice? What if there wasn't a Planned Parenthood a mile from campus? I came across the thoughts of a young woman who had an abortion in college, completely secular, but was struck by the honesty and, if I dare imagine, the universality of such an experience that lives beneath the surface:

"I don’t know why, but afterwards I just felt so empty. Not that I had put on any weight or anything; I just felt physically empty. I could physically feel the lack of my baby’s presence. I wasn’t bloated anymore. I didn’t throw up anymore. I didn’t feel nauseous. It felt wrong to just go back to my life as if nothing had happened. I had erased all evidence of my baby.  

After a couple months of therapy and many self-help books, I was finally able to cope with my abortion. Sometimes, I still think about how old my baby would be if I had decided to keep him or her. I also wonder if it would have been a boy or a girl. There are so many questions and so many things that I wish I could tell my baby. I wish I could apologize. I wish I could explain. I wish I could tell it how much I loved it, even though I didn’t want it. 

There are some things in life that you will never get over. You will carry these things in your heart from the day you made your decision until the day you leave this world. They might be common knowledge, dark secrets, or white lies, but whatever it is, you hide it deep inside your soul under layers of scarring. After a while, what happened feels like a lifetime ago, something that you know happened, but still don’t really like it did. Something you can barely remember — probably because it hurt so much that you had to force yourself to forget it just to move on. And you will move on with your life, but at any moment, a reminder can send you spiraling back. Free-falling back into the hole you tried so hard to bury — to that decision that changed your life forever."

The choices we make have consequences, sometimes seen and many times unforeseen, and whether we like them or not. Regret is an acute ache of the heart, a dull intermittent torment in this life and an agonizing, eternal one in the next. The pain of regret for those who find themselves in Hell is the torture of knowing you had so many chances to save your soul and be happy with God, but lost Heaven because of mortal sin.  You are surrounded by souls, millions of souls, who have made similar choices to reject love. "Here," they say, "we drink hatred like water."

St Bridget of Sweden said, "if Hell pains were visibly seen as they now exist, man would be totally frozen with fear and would see Heaven out of fear and not out of love. Since no one ought to seek Heavenly joy out of fear of punishment but rather out of divine charity, these pains are therefore now hidden."

But if you are reading this there is a 100% chance you are still alive. And that means it is not too late to turn away from regret, from shame, from loss, while Death remains at bay. Life Itself is calling you.  There is nothing--nothing--you could have done in this life that God does not have the power to pardon through the merciful heart of His Son Jesus Christ. When something is buried so deep it can be hard to see, and it takes great courage to unearth what has been buried years and decades ago. We live so as not to confront it.

I began writing about my parent's marriage, and their choice to remain faithful to their vows. That choice has had long-lasting consequences for the good, and I am so so grateful for they made it, though they probably didn't think about it at the time. To think it could have all been different had they considered divorce based on short-term hardships, had chopped down the tree at the base that had been growing and developing roots. There's no taping a tree trunk back together after it's felled. There's no way to bring back a life that has been 'erased.' And so the potential for regret comes part and parcel with the awesome gift of free will that God graciously imparts to each of us.

If you are living with regret, lay your burdens down. Lay them at the foot of the cross. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. Do it while you are still alive, face the pain now rather than suffer the eternal pain of regret that is the mark of Hell. God is so merciful, so loving, and able to be trusted. He is pining to forgive, He exists to love, and He will stop at nothing to go after those who are lost.

"If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared." (Ps 130:3-4)