Regrets, I’ve Had A Few

Dear Sutton and Savannah,

I am always taken back when I hear someone say, “ I have no regrets.” I can’t relate. For some reason my mind replays uncomfortable conversations, missed opportunities, avoidable blunders, and reactive interactions that hurt people I love. The weight of those memories can be debilitating. I want to be quick to say, “I’m sorry,” and to take responsibility for any consequences of my choices. However, I also want to treat my past with grace and operate from the posture that my choices were the best I knew to do given the resources, knowledge and level of maturity I had at the time. History is wasted if I don’t learn from it, but today is wasted if I simply ruminate on history.

-Dad

Inside Out Lectionary Letters

Year A - 5th Sunday in Lent (Texts, Art, Hymns)

Readings for March 22, 2026

Ezekiel 37:1-14 / Psalm 130 / Romans 8:6-11 / John 11:1-45

Scripture as Mirror of the Soul - Psalm 130

This psalm shares a common thread with Psalm 121, which we explored a few weeks ago. Both are part of the Songs of Ascent—psalms likely sung on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But they face in different directions. Psalm 121 gives voice to anxiety about the future and moves toward trust. Psalm 130 turns its gaze backward, into regret, and begins the slow movement toward mercy.

When fear of the future and guilt from the past take hold, they compress the present. The soul becomes trapped between what might happen and what has already happened. The psalmist names this condition honestly: “Out of the depths I cry…” This is not mild discomfort. It is a cry from beneath the weight of something that cannot be easily lifted.

We know this weight. Regret can settle into the soul like a chain we continue to carry long after the moment has passed. Dickens captured this vividly in A Christmas Carol, where Marley is bound by the burdens he forged in life. Psalm 130 speaks from that same place—the recognition that something within us is heavy, tangled, and unresolved.

And yet, the psalm does not end in despair. It turns, slowly, toward what it calls the “unfailing love” of the Divine.

Love is the only force capable of meeting this depth.

But here is where the inner struggle becomes clear. We tend to look for love outwardly—to earn it, secure it, or prove ourselves worthy of it through relationships, achievement, or approval. And even when we receive it, something in us remains unsettled. The deeper issue is not the absence of love around us, but the difficulty of allowing love to take root within us—especially in the parts we have judged, hidden, or rejected.

Psalm 130 invites a shift from striving for love to becoming receptive to grace.

Forgiveness, in this light, is not a transaction. It is an integration. It requires that the self-righteous parts loosen their grip on judgment, and that the shame-bearing parts release their defenses. Neither part disappears. Instead, they are invited into relationship—held together by a deeper current of mercy.

This is the inner pilgrimage.

The journey to the sacred is not about leaving parts of ourselves behind, but about allowing all parts to be gathered into a wider field of grace. When love begins to move in both directions—toward the parts that judge and the parts that hide—the weight begins to shift. Not instantly, but noticeably.

And perhaps that is what redemption looks like:
not the erasure of the past, but the transformation of our relationship to it.