What If?

As I write this, there are 53 days, and 17 hours left of 2013. I don't know about you, but that makes me panic a little bit. I've been thinking a lot lately about my life, and have realized that this year, I didn't accomplish a lot of what I wanted to. I have grown and changed so much as a person, but there are a lot of opportunities I didn't take. Some of them I know I was right in turning down, but others - I'm beginning to wonder what if?

What if I had said yes?
What if I had just tried?

To be fair, I did a lot things this year that required a lot of courage. I tried a lot of things I normally wouldn't. But still, those questions linger...

I'm beginning to think though, maybe those are the wrong what if questions. I don't think it's wrong to wonder what if... I just think we need to ask them from a different perspective.

What if the miracle was even getting one moment with you?

What if You're making me all that I was meant to be?

C.S. Lewis writes: 'We can never know what might have been, but what is to come is another matter entirely.'

So maybe we shouldn't apply our what if questions to the past. Maybe we should apply them to the present, and to the future. Maybe instead of wondering 'what if that happened back then' we could wake up each morning and ask 'what if everything gets better today?'

What if today is the first day of the rest of my life?

What if everything I'm facing is preparation for an amazing future?

In my last blog post, I wrote about regret. I said that we weren't made to live our lives carrying regret for our past. The reality is, it's hard not to do that. Especially when we start a year with such grand intentions, only to be almost at the end of it realizing we've achieved very little of what we thought we would. But I meant what I said. Regret is a choice, Beloved. And just as I'm choosing to not regret decisions and choices I've made, so can you. We can't change the past. We can't take back words we said, and we can't erase hurt we caused. But we can take responsibility, ask for forgiveness, and then move forward. We can choose to forgive ourselves, see it as lessons learned, and just keep going.

Brave-heart, what if the best is yet to come?