I was fascinated by an article written in 2012 by Bronnie Ware. As a nurse, she spent years working in hospice, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded many of the conversations she had with patients as they faced their final days on earth. She wrote of the extraordinary clarity that people often have at the end of their lives. The reoccurring regrets that patients articulated are compelling to me. The top two regrets were “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me” and “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
Living with regret is a hard thing for sure. But, dying with regret seems even bigger.
James 4:17 “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” The context of that verse is boasting about tomorrow. That we think we’ll have time to make things right…but often tomorrow comes sooner than we expect. So, unless we make our actions intentional, they don’t happen.
So here’s the question: What’s your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?