Dear friend,

When I was a child, I had the best teacher ever. My mother. One of the things that she did was allow us to explore in our free time some of the educational things.

For example, sometimes we got to play with the blocks we used for visualizing math problems outside of school time. Sometimes we got to read an extra chapter of our historically educational chapter book that was teaching us about famous Christian heroes through the years outside of school time.

And we even got to play with greek and roman "choose your own adventure" books. Have you ever read those? It's a book set in a historical time period, in which you read part of a story as though you are the main character. At certain points in the story you have to choose if your character decides to sign up for the roman army or decides to work as a servant for a roman official. If you choose army, you jump to page 26, but if you choose servant, you go to page 31, and the story continues with different scenarios based on what you chose.

I was quite enchanted with ancient greek and roman culture with their fancy flowing togas and their special baths and the rustic-ness of life.

I would sit at the table and choose paths and flip through different scenarios. But I remember the first time I did it. I choose servant, then I chose another thing and another thing until boom, out of no where, my character drank poisoned wine and died.

It was so shocking and abrupt that I felt failure strike my heart. "No, no no, let's just rewind and try again". So I did. I flipped back to the beginning and tried to figure out which point exactly started the inevitable tragic end.

But most of the time, no matter which decision I made, I reached the end with a sinking pit in my stomach of regretting my choice after seeing where it led me.

I absolutely hated the sinking feeling of regret that hit me with each failed "adventure" through the Greco-Roman world. (I was totally too emotionally invested in the educational book).

Weirdly enough, that feeling and story has always stayed with me.

There have been moments in my life when I spoke much too quickly and much too harshly to my siblings and immediately that same pang of regret, that realization that I can't just go back and start the story over again would it me.

There have been moments when I realized I put too much trust in untrustworthy people and now there was a complicated mess of emotions all bruised and tangled at my feet, and I had the same feeling of regret again.

Each time, I thought, "If I could just turn back the pages and try that again.... just choose a different thing, just rewind and start over...."

But real life isn't a "choose your own adventure" story. There's no going back, no re-dos, and even saying sorry for something doesn't erase the hurt it may have left behind.

Now, I'm not trying to be all depressing woe is me I've messed up and there's no way to fix it. No, because what I've realized is there's nothing I can do about the past at all. I cannot change what I did or didn't do, I can't rewind, none of that.

But I can sure choose differently next time.

I can make sure that my next decision isn't following the same mistakes as the last one. I can't undo the past, but I can choose to live without creating further regrets, as best I can.

No matter what age you are, if you still have breath in your lungs and blood in your veins, if you are not a slave to sin, if you are free in Christ, you have the ability to choose things you won't regret.

We don't have to get stuck in the cycles of deciding the things we've always regretted deciding in the past. We can choose differently, choose more God-honoring-ly, choose more biblically.

Yes, it's hard, yes it takes a lot of work, yes it takes the Lord working in us, that is all true, but my point is that we can choose a future without regrets.

We can make sure that the next conversation is kinder than the last. We can make sure that the next decision considers others more than ourselves. We can make sure that the next thing we prioritize isn't distraction or social media, but is time with the Lord.

We can't undo the past, but we can learn from it. We're all going to regret something at the end of our lives. Let's not add needlessly to the list of things we'll regret someday.

Here's to being intentional about how we live, in the little things as well as the big. Here's to living an un-regretted today. Here's to doing it together.

This has been deep thoughts with Isabel, I hope you enjoyed. What's a deep thought you've had lately? Reply to this email to let me know! I love hearing from y'all! :)

~Isabel Grace

P.S. There's only 4 days left to join the Print Club! I only have a few more spots left, so if you've been interested in signing up, nows the time! You can read more about it (and/or signup!) by clicking HERE. You can also reply to this email with any questions, and I'd be happy to help!

Also, for you pet lovers out there, I have something very exciting and very exclusive releasing (hopefully) next week! You who are signed up to get these emails will be the first to know and have first dibs on this exciting thing! I'm keeping it a surprise for now, but let's just say I am really having to work hard to keep this a secret!