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Tag Archives: dying

Addressing the Questions of Every Decade

As part of our month-long celebration around my transition, we invited Gordon MacDonald, one of my long-term mentors to speak at New Life this past weekend. He is now 74 years old. Among the many gifts he offered out of his 50 years of pastoral leadership, were his reflections that a deep, healthy church includes people in every stage of life. Every decade, he argued, has a question. Teens-Who am I and who am I becoming? 20’s-What am I going to do with my life and with whom? 30’s-Now that I have all these responsibilities and obligations, how do I manage all these priorities? 40’s–Am I a success or a failure? 50’s –As I move into the second half of life, who is this younger generation that wants me out of the way and how do I cope with the disappointments in my life? 60’s-How much longer can I do what defines me or. Read more.

I Will Quit Dying to the Wrong Things

I won’t put things most important, like self-care, at the mercy of things least important, like always putting others before myself. I will actively pursue a day of rest and what is fun for me. I will make time for those things that are a delight to my unique soul.

Things You Need to Quit. Begin with #1

1. Quit Being Afraid of What Others Think 2. Quit Lying 3. Quit Dying to the Wrong Things 4. Quit Denying Anger, Sadness, Fear 5. Quit Blaming 6. Quit Overfunctioning 7. Quit Faulty Thinking 8. Quit Living Someone Else’s Life 1. Quit Being Afraid of What Others Think • I will not say “yes” when I really want to say “no” because I’m afraid the other person will be angry, sad or disappointed. I will quit agreeing with people if I really don’t agree with them. • I don’t need your approval to feel good about myself. I already have intrinsic worth and value as a human being because of God’s love in creating me and dying for me – I have nothing left to prove!

Top Five Regrets of the Dying

What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life? Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in with the dying. She began to ask them their most common regrets at the end of their lives. Ware writes, “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.” And among the top, from men in particular, is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Here are the top five regrets of the dying that she discovered: 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. She notes: “When people realize. Read more.