Second Secret: Leave No Regrets

Two: Leave No Regrets
(Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Matthew 7:13-14)

A. Introduction
1. Robert Frost (“The Road Not Taken,” 1915) began his famous poem about choosing with “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I’m sorry I could not travel both.” He had it nailed didn’t he? In life we have to make choices. We can’t have our cake and eat it too. We can’t enter both the narrow gate and the wide gate. We must make choices, and the choices we make matter.
a. Frost ends with this final verse,
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in the woods, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
b. Sometimes choices are hard to distinguish. If you read Frost’s poem carefully, he tells us the paths were just about the same. He says, “And both that morning equally lay..”
c. Frost also talks of the rationalization that we make that choice doesn’t matter, that we can return someday to take the other path, but then acknowledges that life goes on when he says, “yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.”

2. Our lives are defined by our choices, sometimes major, sometimes subtle. Have you thought about the choices that you’ve made that clearly define your life, that have made you a completely different person today than you might otherwise have been? What about the choices your parents made that put you in the place you grew up, the schools you attended, the friends you met? I can see all of these choices having an impact on Toni’s life right now. And I can see the roads that diverged in my life that have completely defined who I am today.
a. After my sophomore year in college, I had chosen not to continue ROTC and go into the Army. The deadline has passed. When I got home for the summer, my Dad had several of his friends who had been in the Army talk to me. My other choice might have been to take a job as a petroleum engineer in Bartlesville, OK. Drastic difference.
b. Instead, I chose to take ROTC, they chose to accept my application even after the deadline, and it opened up a whole new horizon for me. Initially, I was only going to be in the Army for three years, but we chose to stay. That led to graduate school, teaching at West Point, managing the development of helicopters for the Army, and that led industry at Sikorsky Aircraft after retirement. One day Rosemary and I were walking down the street in Sydney Australia shaking our heads and saying, “Two little kids from Burke South Dakota.” We thought about the diverging paths that had gotten us to that sidewalk in Sydney.
c. Then there was another choice. We lived a good life in Connecticut. I had a job that I loved, a boss that was we loved. We lived a home that we had built just for us and we loved. Life was good. We would have had a comfortable life. We would have made a lot, I mean a lot more money (enough to have been a significant loss in the stock market the last few months); but we decided to take a risk and come to Missouri. “Two roads diverged in the woods, and I—I chose to take the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference.”

3. But the greatest, the most important choice I made is one of faith. Just as Dad chose to talk to me about the Army (And I think that was a risk on his part. Have you tried to talk to a 19 year old lately? A risk.), Curt chose to talk to me about faith. Oh, I’d been nudged, but where might I be right now if he hadn’t talked to me about faith? “And I—I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference.”

B. Body
1. We’re in a sermon series, **“The Five Secrets We Must Discover Before We Die,” based on a book by John Izzo, In his research for his book, Izzo asked 15,000 people “who were the wise elders in your life? Who had lived a long and full life and had something to teach us before we died?” From the answers as to who were the wise elders, he chose 235, ages 60 to 106 to be interviewed from all walks of life and all faiths.
a. Last week, we covered the first secret: Be true to yourselves and its corollary: Live life with intention. If you are going to discover what’s true, you have to examine your life, you have to be intentional about it. You have to live life awake.
A good life is made up of a string of good days. We have to ask what makes a good day, what makes a “good tired” at the end of the day? And what causes a bad day, a bad tired, that gnawing fatigue that we experience? What makes them up? And then we need to move away from one toward the other. We can only do that by living life awake, intentionally.
b. Today we talk about the second secret, “Leave No Regrets.”

2. In his research, John Izzo was told over and over again that the greatest fear in life was not dying. It was coming to the end of life and saying, “I wish I had.”
a. Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “Of all the sayings of mice and men, the saddest is ‘What might have been.’”
b. Coming to the end of life and saying, “I wish I had.”
c. Many of the ‘I wish I had’s’ deal with relationships don’t they? Harriet Beecher Stowe may have said it best, “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
d. Regrets.

3. You notice that the regrets were not for words poorly said, or for deeds poorly done nut words and deeds never attempted. Indeed, relationships involve courage. If we are going live a life in which we leave no regrets, we need to have courage. We need to risk words and deeds. Izzo’s wise elders almost without exception said we need to risk more.
a. Until I read this book, I never understood Vonnegut’s reference to “of mice and men.” But he was telling us that life involves courage, the courage to risk.
b. The wise elders told Izzo that it was not to try and fail that they regretted, it was not to try at all, it was not the risk of failure, it was not to risk at all.

4. One of Izzo’s (p 48) favorite interviewees was an 84 year old man named Donald. He had been a shy young man, especially around the opposite sex. Just never comfortable with girls. One night at a college dance he saw the girl of his dreams. She was a popular girl, surrounded by popular girls. And he knew that popular girls blew off shy guys and probably would never give them a dance. But taking a great big gulp, he walked over to her and he not only asked for a dance but told her that she was the woman that he was going to marry. She wasn’t terribly impressed but she danced with him anyway. He said, “I had to pursue her several more weeks before she came to realize it was a dance that would last a lifetime.” His wife of 56 years had died six years before the interview, but Donald said, “There’s not one day that I don’t feel her presence around me.”
a. Such a simple decision made early in life. Yet the decision to risk failure reaching out for what he wanted turned out to be one of the most important decisions of Donald Klein’s life. It shaped who he was. Who might he have become instead if he hadn’t risked failure at that college dance?
b. And we know of stories like that. Last summer I told you of Jessy driving four hours with a ring in his pocket to ask his high school sweetheart, ten years after high school, to marry him. His mom had said he didn’t sleep at all the night before afraid of what her answer might be. He was willing to risk the failure and it made all the difference.

5. How is it that we choose courage? John Izzo (p 52) told of Elsa, a woman in her 70s that had grown up in Germany. After the war, things were difficult in Germany. With no job prospects, no family, nobody she knew at all, she decided to move to Canada and start a new life. She didn’t even know the language. She told Izzo that as risky as it was, that decision had been the turning point of her life.
a. As I read this, I thought of Diana Hill. While Diana was not coming from Italy to America alone, when she chose to marry, she was choosing a new life in a new land among people she did not know. It had to be a risk. It had to take courage.
b. How do you make such a choice? Elsa had great words of wisdom. She said that whenever she had a risk she was considering, she would begin by imagining the highest possible good that could occur by taking the risk. Then would imagine the worst. If she could handle the worst, and the worst of going to Canada was that things wouldn’t work out and she’d have to go home; if she could handle the worst, then she’d keep the image of the highest possibility in front of her—a new life, new friends, finding love, raising children in a new country. These were the highest possibilities and these were the images she kept in front of her.
c. Unfortunately, many of us live our lives quite the opposite way, keeping the image of the worst in front of us and stifling the courage we need to risk.

6. What about risking the most important choice we make in our life, the choice about faith? We might look at the highest possibilities and the worst.

a. What is the highest possible good that can come from a life of faith?
i. First, a personal relationship with the greatest man that ever lived.
ii. An abundant life. “I came that you would have life and it abundantly.”
iii. Simple rules to live by: Love God and your neighbor as yourself.
iv. Forgiveness of sins. By definition the way to live without regret, unshackled by burdens or guilt.
v. And the greatest and highest possibility of all, eternal life.

b. And what of the worst that can happen?
i. Like Elsa, I might have to make some new friends and relationships take time. One of those new relationships is with Jesus. I may have to get to know him. I may have to communicate with him. I might have to pray. Most of all, I’ll have to call him Lord.
ii. I may have to put up with the joy of simple pleasures of life. I may have to choose abundance rather than materialism.
iii. To know whether or not I’m living by God’s rules I may have to take the time to examine my life. I might even have to serve my neighbors at times that are inconvenient.
iv. I’ll have to confess my sins and then turn in a new direction.
v. I’ll have to live with the expectation that heaven exists and that someday we’ll all stand together in the presence of God with rejoicing.

c. Can we live with the worst? Then keep the image of the highest possibilities in front of us: A Christ-centered, simple, abundant, un-shackled life, with the promise of eternity before me. How good is that? It is worth the risk of everything.

7. One of the final chapters in Izzo’s book (p133) is “Preparing to die well: happy people are not afraid to die.”
a. I think more than any other of the secrets, leaving no regrets prepares us best for the end of life. Leave no regrets, to be at the end of life and be able to say, “I’ve had lived a full life; I’ve taken the risks. I may have gambled a few times and lost and in the words of the Moonlight Gambler: ‘Better to have gambled and lost than not to have loved at all.’”
b. We are people of faith. Faith allows us to set our failures and regrets aside, place our burdens, our guilt at the feet of Jesus.
c. Those who cast their cares on Christ can live a life risking the roads less traveled by. They can live life with courage. They can live life to the fullest. And those that live that way can embrace death as a part of life, knowing with confidence that it is the gateway to eternity. A life of faith is a life without regrets.

8. When we live a life of faith, a life of no regrets, we are actually kind to ourselves. There’s a line in Izzo’s book (p 142) that is almost a throw away line that I think is very important. We need to “live our life rather than judge our life.” Live our lives rather than judging our lives.
a. Examination, living wake, laying ourselves out to the Holy Spirit, seeing where we have missed the mark so that we can move closer to the centerline of our life’s path is not meant to be judging, it’s meant to be living. Judging means to diminish us, living means to come alive, to live more fully, to live the secrets more deeply. Living closer to the centerline of the road is living more deeply.
b. When we live our lives rather than judging them, we leave no regrets.

C. Close.
1. Leave no regrets is really about making the best choices. How is it that we make the best choices? “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” How do we choose?

2. Izzo (p 54-55) has two suggestions that I think are priceless. (I used these in Gary and Maria’s wedding but they probably got missed. I think they are especially important for people who make choices together.)

a. The first would be picturing yourselves going to the wisest old person you know, someone who has lived life fully, who has lived and loved. Maybe someone sitting in their rocking chair on the front porch. What they would say about the choice you are about to make? If you can answer that, you may have your answer.
b. Or turn the tables, picture yourselves as that wise old person who has lived life fully, who has lived and loved sitting on the front porch gathering your grandchildren and great-grandchildren around you. Picture yourselves telling your grandchildren about the decision you are about to make. What choice would make the best story? What path, what road would make the very best story that you could tell your grandchildren? And you will have your answer.

3. Rosemary and I chose to move from Connecticut to Missouri to be with Curt and Toni. I can’t imagine what the story of my life would be without being involved with Toni’s life.

4. But most importantly, I can’t imagine the story of my life without Jesus Christ. It is the story that has weaved together all the other stories. “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20 loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days,” And the very best story.

5. “Two roads diverged in the woods, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and it has made all the difference.” So may it be in all of your lives. Amen.

**Izzo, John. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publications, Inc., 2008.