What parent does not have regrets?  We all do, and if we give our memories free reign as we lay in bed at night, regret might overwhelm us for long moments before sleep.   But what if our mistakes are not as mistaken as we thought, especially if we make them striving to build resilience in our children?

In “Both Our Beauty and Our Awkwardness We Bring,” from his Story of a Man collection, Michael Gurian contemplates the idea of parental error as holiness.  We hope you enjoy it.

Both Our Beauty and Our Awkwardness We Bring

When I was a young parent, lost in my wilderness of opposites, I coached my daughters and their friends at soccer.  Convinced the world would be destroyed if its children forgot the ablutions of victory, I yelled, “Be more aggressive!  Turn outside!   Come on!  Come ON!”  Each child in my charge was already destined for greatness, but I didn’t see each gift.  Instead, I was the loud-voiced man of whom other parents said, “He’s too into it,” too “into the game,” too “into winning.”

Today, little guilts shoot off inside me like fireworks, and I do regret all my early battling.  But, still, could it be:  from my passions grew my mistakes?  Some of those children, many years later, enjoy performing at sports.  Others have gone on to do other things.  When I ask my own grown children “Was I too hard on you during soccer games?” one says yes, one no, but both smile, for I am part of their pilgrimage.  They also know: the passion I expressed in games was not evil; it was my awkward engagement in the world.

The God I love is engaged, always near, yelling at times.  Sometimes this God could do better—Job, for instance, did not need so much of God’s passion—but only the indifferent and cynical can claim God is not engaged in this world.  Life comes at us like a huge wind; we had better have some passion to push back with.

And so I wander this world asking, “Are my mistakes, also, a drink from the cup of spirit?”  I hear an answer it has taken me a lifetime to understand:   Except for errors that grow from evil, your mistakes are part of your holiness.   Both beauty and awkwardness you will bring to this life–each as proof I set you free at creation to choose your own way of love.