I’m sitting here prepping to be snowed in, trying to make alternative plans for Catholic Schools Week Open House—a make-or-break day for our registration efforts. I keep telling myself that once I make the momentous call (delay, pivot, pray harder), I’ll finally have time to catch up on blogging. Or, more accurately, to drain the brain overflow.

Amid snow forecasts and contingency plans, I fired off a text thread to the people who help me make the big decisions. Half-joking, I asked the Holy Spirit to intervene—this one needed divine clarity. Almost on cue, a familiar voice surfaced. One of my favorite priests (and former bosses) used to say: “Spit in one hand, and put all your hopes, wishes, and wants of doing over—or doing better—in the other. Which one has substance in it?”

That line landed harder than any weather alert. So, for the sake of this blog, I’ll defer the snowy Open House decision and turn instead to the other things I tend to clutch tightly in that other hand—the hopes, the what-ifs, the alternate timelines.

In a strange way, it feels like one of those MGM betting commercials voiced by St. Louis native Jon Hamm. The temptation to roll the dice on another life. Another version of me. Or maybe it’s more like Nicolas Cage in The Family Man, waking up to see how a single decision could unravel into an entirely different existence.

I often write about not letting the past hijack the future. Still, if I’m honest, sometimes it’s human—maybe even healthy—to imagine the redos, without the pressure of walking on eggshells like The Butterfly Effect, where one tiny change ruins everything. So… what would I change?

One thing I can’t undo—no way in Hades—is living with a bit of Napoleon syndrome. At 5’4”, I spent a good chunk of my life proving this frame could be just as athletic as my 6’-something counterparts. And I succeeded, sometimes.

When I was younger, I regularly leg-pressed the entire stack of weights as if it were a point to prove. Even now, I run into people I haven’t seen in years who say, “I see you still have those Sturgill thighs!” Those choices gave me explosive 10–20-yard bursts—useful when I played rugby at SMSU, a proud member of a team ranked #7 in the country in the early 1980s. But those same choices most likely contributed to both knees and both hips being replaced far earlier than I would have preferred.  

There’s pride in that chapter. And regret.

If I hadn’t wrestled so hard with body image, maybe I would’ve trusted myself more. Maybe I would’ve asked out more young women, especially one who, like me, worked hard from an early age and worked alongside my mother. Ironically, I’m only just getting to know her now… at the ripe age of 63.

And yet, this is where the butterfly effect becomes real. I am deeply blessed with my wife, my children, and my grandchildren, who enrich my life beyond measure. Change one thread, and that entire tapestry may never have existed. I do sometimes wish I had met my wife earlier in life. We probably crossed paths the summer before our senior year in high school at a St. Louis Hill Day celebration. We were that close to rubbing elbows.

I wonder if I might have made a bigger impact as a lawyer than as an educator. Would I have reached as many lives if I’d taken that part-time social studies job at Bayless instead of committing fully to Catholic education? The pay certainly would’ve been better in public schools. Should I have taken that head football coaching job in Humansville, where I knew people in high places? 

Would it have been wiser to stay up North for college rather than head to San Antonio?

If I’d stayed, I might have gained some things—but I would have lost fraternity brothers and friendships that have taken up lifetime residence in my heart.

I wish I had met my brother Darrell before I turned 55. My brother Jeff before I was 63. The same with my sister Kelly. I wonder what life would’ve looked like without fractures in my family—if my sisters Debbie and Susie and I had grown up together in a more traditional home, would we still be estranged?

And maybe the hardest truth to admit: I wish I had trusted myself more. I had—and still have—the skills to have been “someone” with “something” on YouTube or Facebook. Fear, doubt, and timing got in the way. But here’s the thing. All of those other-hand thoughts—the wishing, the wondering, the do-overs—have very little substance.

What does have substance is gratitude. So for now, I choose to thank God for the many blessings in my life—blessings shaped not by perfect decisions, but by real ones. Decisions made with limited information, imperfect confidence, and a whole lot of grace filling in the gaps.

Snow will fall. Plans will change. This Open House has pivoted. And tomorrow, I’ll still have two hands. One for letting go, and one for holding onto grace.