“We regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.” –Mark Twain
Well, it’s close. What about you? Do your “I wish I had’s” outweigh your “I wish I hadn’t’s”? My list gets pretty extensive on both sides of that coin.
My wife’s view of the “hadn’t’s” differs from mine. If it was a sin, she regrets doing it. She believes that you cannot come to repentance without having regrets. I have a hard time with that. I suspect our difference is semantical. I believe all our past experiences have led us to where we are now, and I am content with where I am. More specifically, wasn’t it my past sins that led me to repentance, and didn’t repentance lead me to Christ? Should I regret that?
But Karen certainly has a point. If sin is anything that separates us from God, and the wages of sin is (spiritual) death, we must vigilantly try to avoid the “I wish I hadn’t’s.” I think Jesus had the proper perspective on it when he told the adulterous woman, “Go your way and sin no more.”
If you have read much of my blog, you know I advocate introspection and retrospection as healthful self-awareness activities. So I have looked back and identified specifics on the “I wish I hadn’t” side: I regret being an arms dealer (see Happiness is a warm gun – posted 5 January, 2020). I regret accusing my brother-in-law of cheating at cards when I had no idea if he had or not. I regret hurting several girls because I didn’t feel the same about them as they did about me—I prefer having my heart broken to breaking one. I regret putting my son ahead of the team in a coaching situation and not informing a player about a decision I made before a team function. I regret beating people over the head with Christ right after I became a Christian—as if I knew anything! I regret choosing a best man on the basis of belief rather than friendship. (To this day, I have no idea what became of my “best man”.) I regret certain sexual behaviors. I regret being stingy because I worried more about the future than the present. Man, my list of “hadn’t’s” could go on and on. Enough.
Although the instances might be more general, my list of “I wish I had’s” is equally cumbersome. I wish I had expressed the love I felt more openly. I wish I had been more honest, and thus developed deeper friendships. I wish I learned to dance—and speak another language. I wish I had planned our finances better and kept my children out of college loan debt. I wish I was more sensitive to the needs of others. I wish I was a better listener. I wish I read The Story of Civilization (11 volumes) by Will Durant. I wish I took golf lessons when I was young.
All of this self-examination leads me back to my original position: I (now) am the product of all the life events that came before this. While I can unearth heaps of regrets (omissions and commissions), I look back on my life with gratitude. I know all my past sins are covered, and I know to try to avoid sin with all my heart because that separates me from Him. If you will refer back to the allusion in the title of this essay, Frank Sinatra’s biggest mistake wasn’t the regrets—it was his insistence on doing it My Way.
And that is definitely my biggest regret: all the time I have wasted not being aware of His presence when He has been here all along.
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