When you listen to the testimonies of older people, you come away with a sense of sobriety and resolve from their words. They wish that they’d done things differently. They sense their time is short. Being a few laps ahead of you on life’s journey, their wisdom speaks through the wrinkles in their faces and the tears in their eyes. It grips us—or at least it should.
Regret is an unpleasant companion to accompany you through life. It should be avoided at all costs.
I’m also struck when I hear of sin capsizing a life or ministry. The ripples from the waves of sin extend far and wide, unsettling many boats and passengers destined for heaven’s harbor. Who doesn’t feel seasick when they hear the news? We’re left looking for a seat, stability, or an open window. Dishonoring the Lord like this must be avoided at all costs.
Then there’s the day-to-day regret we feel for being selfish. We’re rude to our spouse, sharp with the kids, infrequent in prayer, and absorbed with ourselves. Neglecting the important, we focus on the trivial. As we stack days like this, we are living a life we’ll soon regret.
Reverse-Engineer a Happy Deathbed
I think about this often. If the Lord should give me the privilege of a deathbed to look back upon my life, I don’t want it to be filled with decades of regret. Imagine how sad and jarring it would be to discover your actual values at the end of your life. Here you lived for seven or eight decades thinking you were all about faith, family, and friends. But actually, it’s all about me, me, me.
It’s better to have our values settled and live in light of them. It’s living with intentionality.
Imagine how sad and jarring it would be to discover your actual values at the end of your life. This is preventable.
One way to do this is to reverse-engineer your life according to your values. As Christians, we know that this means to do all things with a desire to please and glorify the Lord (1 Cor. 10:31; 2 Cor. 5:9). Is it possible to reverse-engineer a happy deathbed? Or at least one without regret? I think it is possible. And it’s worth our best effort.
One Question I Ask Myself Everyday
There are a lot of factors at play and many ways to go about this, but I want to share one thing I do every day toward this end. (note: this is not to be suggested instead of Bible reading, prayer, and the other ordinary means of grace. It’s just a tool that I’ve found helpful to use as I keep my heart with all vigilance. – Prov. 4:23)
In my journal, I have a page dedicated to daily reflection. Our reflex is often to move on to what we must do next. We give very little thought to what we have done and what we think about it. I set aside time each day to reflect on the previous day. I want to answer this question: Is this a day I’d regret or be happy about when I’m 75?
Rather than simply judging “yes” or “no,” I evaluate several important areas of my life to see whether the day reflected my values.
My categories are what you’d expect. They involve my relationship with the Lord, my wife, kids, and friends. They involve my physical and mental health, personal development, virtues, and vices. I work through these diagnostic categories with honesty and make my notes. In the end, I ask, based on this, was this a day that I’d regret or be happy about when I’m 75?
Some days, it’s a yes. Regrettably, some days it’s not. But this is where the process shows its value. By checking in with myself and honestly evaluating my life, I’m forcing myself to stop undesirable days from multiplying through neglect or indifference. Evaluating my life according to my values helps me make appropriate course corrections along the way. Instead of discovering my values at the end of my life, I want to remind myself about them daily. This also helps to short-circuit the way sinful patterns work. As J.C. Ryle says, we go astray in our hearts before we do in our lives. This practice endeavors to cut the weeds of sin early before it takes over my life. I know it doesn’t prevent sin, but the daily routine forces me to keep short accounts with God and others and be honest with myself.
While there’s nothing we can do about our past, there’s much we can do today that will affect our future. If you’re a Christian, living with intentionality is your chief priority (1 Cor. 10:31). Take some time to think about what that looks like for you and whether or not it’s a consistent trend. And as you do, pray for God’s help as you endeavor to live in a way that’s pleasing to him (2 Cor. 5:9) because he has been so gracious to us (Titus 2:11–14).