Regret.
Jan 27th by Jon- Tagged in:
- serious wednesdays
“Can I talk to you for a minute in a conference room?”
A co-worker asked me that a few weeks ago. My first thought was of course, “I’m about to get fired.” Even though this was a peer and not a superior, I still thought that maybe I was about to get the ax. Call me paranoid, I just assume that when a girlfriend says, “We need to talk,” they’re about to dump you and when someone at work asks to “talk to you for a minute,” they’re about to fire you. I admit, it’s a very sweaty existence I lead.
But when we went into the conference room, the one that smells like dry erase markers and disappointment, he turned to me and said something I wasn’t expecting, “I watched someone die yesterday.”
This came as a shock. I had already started mentally packing up my stuff and emptying my cubicle, but my coworker Brian caught me off guard.
While at the gym the day before, Brian had seen a man have a heart attack on one of the machines. A crowd quickly formed, but confusion reigned. The gym employees were slow to act and 911 was not called immediately. Brian prayed with a handful of other people and comforted the man the best he knew how, but by the time the ambulance showed up, it was too late. With his wife standing in the crowd of exercisers, a stranger at the gym passed away.
So on an otherwise uneventful morning in an otherwise ordinary conference room, Brian was replaying the whole situation. With the laser focus we all seem to inherit when feeling guilty, he was watching the film of the day before looking for something he could have done differently. There must have been something. Anything that would have saved that man.
That’s a horrible moment that maybe you’re familiar with too. Perhaps the circumstances were different, but somewhere in your life, there’s been a moment you wish happened differently. You lost your job. You lost your marriage. You were too slow to act in a car crash. Your son, the one who used to laugh so hard when you’d build towers of wooden blocks for him to knock over is running away from you and you’re left wondering what you could have done differently.
I don’t know. I don’t know the specifics of your situation. There are some circumstances where we are called to act and have the chance to do something and we don’t. But I think far more often we make the same mistake Brian made. We look back on yesterday or last year or ten years ago and we think we could have done something differently. And if I could tell you the same thing I told Brian, it would be pretty simple.
“God didn’t ask you to be God that day.”
God didn’t turn the reins over to you that day. Just like he didn’t ask Brian to handle a stranger’s aorta tear in the gym, he didn’t ask you to be the God of any particular situation. He is still God. He is still in control. He is still on the throne. And when we act otherwise, it must pain him so.
Because it hurt me to watch Brian that day. It hurt to see him running through scenarios and CPR techniques and a thousand other “what ifs” that morning in the conference room. He had a limitless supply of things that a good person should have done and hear was shamefully trying each and every one on for size.
Maybe you do too. About your marriage and your job and your childhood and your family. And while I’d never encourage you to shirk the responsibility and accountability God gives each of us, I can promise you one thing, he didn’t ask you to be God that day. He’ll never do that. You get to just be Brian. Or Pam or Sue or Felix. That’s enough. That’s how he planned it. For yesterday and today and tomorrow.
Comments
I think it's pretty cool that a co-worker thinks enough of you to single you out to confide in.
I think it's very cool that God gave you the right words at the right time to help Brian.
I think it's extremely cool that the story is also helpful to so many of your readers – probably hundreds if not thousands.
I think it's beyond cool in South Dakota at 8 degrees.
My one for this? Failing to share my faith back in High School when a friend gave a golden opportunity. Caught up with him at the ten year reunion. A month later, his brother sends a facebook message (our only means of communication) telling me he had been found dead. Fortunately, God didn't ask me to be God that day.
Jon,
Thanks for the great post! Been reading for a couple of months now. This one was particularly timely as my husband actually was called into his boss's office with the whole "we need to talk" speech. And promptly laid off/fired.
As girly as this sounds, he hasn't stopped crying since yesterday, saying the same thing as you've written, "what could I have done different?" We are expecting a baby in six weeks and it has been breaking my heart to see my husband like this. Thanks for the awesome article that I can forward on to him!
Soooo .. on serious Wednesday, is it okay to make a joke about God still being on the throne?
I agree with you on something like what Brian went through – where he had a limited amount of time and knowledge in the situation. But my divorce… that was a longer period of time, and I had knowledge, and I made choices. And 5 years later, I still have regret. I didn’t know God then (I knew about him, but didn’t KNOW HIM). So who was in control, me or Him?
If your question is, "Who is in control, me or God?" I guess I would say He is always in control, there's not a time when he has "lost control." Does that mean we don't make decisions that have consequences, not at all. I think we do all the time, but as far as control goes, I think He is always in it.
Thanks, Jon. I really needed this post today because I recently participated in a code (I'm a nurse) where the patient died. The patient was young. We did all we could to provide the right environment for life. Give drugs, pump blood, give breaths, shock. I prayed. We worked hard. But the patient still died.
PS That sucks for your coworker. The hospital has counselors that we talk to when stuff like that happens, but I wouldn't now where to would go in the "real world." Glad you could be there for him.
Brian went to the right person yesterday. Great reminder!
I used to feel like loading a previous save point (in my life). I would swim in the regret pool; tread water in the shame end and drown in the despair end. Fantasizing about a big do-over hasn't helped me at all. I wish I would have done and said some things differently – or not at all, and I've learned a few things the hard way.
But via the grace of God . . .
I eventually learned to appreciate embarrassing stories, proliferate the lessons I learned – with a degree of authority derived from experience, and be grateful for my second, third and fourth chances. More importantly though, I'm learning to take responsibility for the things I'm responsible for and not for the things I'm not responsible for.
God has you right where He needs you………in your day job and on the 'net.
Keep on doing what He's called you to do.
and since I have a tendency to tell God what He ought to be doing……..the sentence "God didn't ask you to be God today" is going on the fridge.
Amazing that the same brain that can find so many weird, funny observances about metro worship leaders can put forth something as sublime and profound as this. You put a smile on my face and a tear in my eye, sometimes overlapping the two.
That’s a great thought for Brian and other times when things happen outside your control, but I don’t know if it translates to everything. It is very healthy to realise when we can do things and when we can’t, though one problem is that it’s so hard to figure out that distinction. e.g. what about Pharaoh not letting the Israelites go until the last plague? Was it his fault so many Egyptians died? Didn’t God harden his heart?
In Brian’s case, he’s not a paramedic and the guy had a heart attack, that’s pretty serious stuff, even for doctors in a hospital.
But for all the times we do actually mess up, I’m glad God’s grace is sufficient.
Beautiful! Thanks!
I have a really hard time with this post. At risk of becoming SCL's resident Mean Person, I can't stand it when people use faith as a justification for inaction. Unless a person did everything possible to help out in an emergency, you can't say that "God didn't ask you to be God." And a lot of times that does happen. There are a lot of deaths, divorces, job losses, etc that are genuinely unavoidable.
From the description, it sounds like Brian had at least a basic grasp of first aid, but he froze up. It happens. So he tried to do the next best thing and pray for the victim. If I had been the one on the floor, I would have preferred the CPR. (Granted, CPR probably would not have made a difference with a torn aorta, but there was no way of knowing that was the culprit at the time.) At least that's my interpretation of the situation from the info provided. Feel free to disagree.
Before anyone accuses me of not knowing what I would do in the same situation, I was in a similar scenario a few years ago. I was walking down the sidewalk of a busy street, when a girl was hit by a car and violently thrown forward a good ten or twenty feet. She was lying crumpled in the street. Like everyone else, I froze. And stared. But then I realized that no one else was helping her. So I tried to remember my first aid training that my employer provided, and was able to help patch up her wounds and immobilize her to prevent further injury. The bottom line is that emergencies can come up without warning, and if you have the ability to help someone, you better do it.
I'm not trying to beat up on Brian. It's human instinct to freeze in a sudden crisis. I feel bad that he had to witness that, and I hope that he bounces back quickly from the trauma. But I hope that people don't use this post to justify the use of religion as a replacement for action–whether in a medical emergency, relationships, work, or whatever else life throws your way.
As a closing note, I'd like to encourage everyone to get first aid training. Sign up at the Red Cross, or see if your employer will sponsor a course. You never know when you might need it.
Rob,
While I agree with you that faith should not be used as an excuse for inaction, I think you're missing the main point of the post. I doubt that Jon is encouraging us to cop out of helping in situations where we can be useful just because "God did not ask us to God that day."
I understood the lesson of the post to be: If you're living with regret and trying to run through all possible permutations of alternate scenarios and actions that you could've done in a specific situation in the past, that's not very helpful because the past is gone and you can't change it. You can, however, look to the future and do the best you can while trusting God to do what He does best: be God.
I think first aid training is a good idea. It's scary to think that I could be in a similar situation and not be able to help because I don't even know the basics of first aid.
God bless you.
Thanks for the reminder, Jon. There are times when I've like the "what ifs" just wouldn't let me go. I've found that thanking God for where I am (where He's led me and what He's given me) is usually an effective way to get out of Regretville – after all, if I'm busy thanking Him, I'm much too busy for regrets!
regret ruins our lives almost as much as trying to be God does. thanks for this…like everyone else has said, I needed to hear this today.
*slobbering mess*
This sight is so much fun but I think the reason we all stay around are the out of left field God moments you seem to throw at us.
"God didn't ask you to be God that day."
My mother-in-law is in the last days of her life right now and we are all going through the shoulda, woulda, couldas. This was so perfect for me today. Thank you!
So true and so necessary for us all to learn.
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John, thank you so much for your message! May God uses your message and humility to heal more people! keep posting! I look forward to read your book as well….