By Cyndi Moor Jones:

 Learning from Mistakes and Regrets

 

I had a recent, wonderful visit from my mother-in-law. She is battling cancer and this trip was hard for her. It’s a six hour drive, but it was something she so wanted to do. It was wonderful. We shared precious conversations, lots of hugs, good food, a few tears and a couple of naps.

My Mother -In-Law hasn’t had an easy life. She is one of seventeen children raised in Minnesota without running water or electricity. She had a difficult first marriage. She left it with her four babies and moved to a new city to work. She held many traditionally “male jobs”. They offered better pay. She married again, yet in many ways still experienced life as a single Mom through all of the years raising her children.

This weekend she shared with me that if she could, she’d go back and make different choices. She has regrets.

My Mother-In-Law is one of the funniest, silliest, most playful people I know. She is one of the strongest women I know. She loves her family fiercely. Her four children love her beyond measure; her grandchildren and great-grandchildren adore her. She is the “favorite” of many nieces and nephews, loved by her siblings and the rest of her family, cherished by many friends.

Should she have done some things differently? Possibly. Does she have reasons for regret? Perhaps. But then, isn’t that true for all of us who are willing to be honest when reflecting on our own lives?

My Mother-In-Law has been told her cancer isn’t curable, but only God knows “the number of our days”. We don’t know, any of us, how long we’ll have each other.

I do know we all have time to make some changes to our lives. We all have opportunities to speak words of love, behave with loving acts of kindness, and listen to one another with hearts that believe in the best in one another. We have time to change some of our “reasons for regret”. I for instance, would love to be known as one of the funniest, silliest, most playful people; one of the strongest women; someone who loves her family and friends, fiercely.

I have some work to do.

©Cyndi Moor Jones. Cyndi is our newest contributor and a breast cancer survivor. You can hear Cyndi  speak on coping with breast cancer in her interview with Yvonne Ortega on Hope for the Journey.  Cyndi owns Abundant Life Massage, a Christian massage therapy clinic in Spokane WA.

Here’s a thought-provoking video called Regrets, from Igniter Media.

Remember that despite any wrong choices you may have made, you can be learning from mistakes and regrets. Christ’s sacrifice for you can make each day new and wash you clean of  unrighteousness. Believe in Him.

For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. 2 Corinthians 7:10, New Living Translation

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:18 NIV Bible.