Greatest Success vs. Biggest Regret

Have you ever made a decision that you immediately regretted? If you’re human, then your answer should be yes. We’ve all done it. Whether it was a choice of words, rolling a bowling ball toward ten pins, opening a door that led to a room where an undressed parent/grandparent stood, etc. The decision could’ve been innocent, but still a regret.

Perhaps it was a weighted decision that caused life-altering heartaches. Regrets are a part of decision-making. In my life, I can’t count the number of times I’ve voiced how I wish I could change a decision I’d made. Sometimes we can get a redo. Unfortunately, most of the time, the decisions we make are final.

“We learn to make good decisions by making bad ones.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the successes we’ve achieved from our decisions. For most people, success doesn’t come by accident. Several choices led to it. And it wasn’t just one circumstance or one decision or being in the right place at the right time. No, success is a result of sound decisions.

How did we learn to make those sound decisions, though? We learned to make good decisions by making bad ones. Failure is a part of success. Just as poor decision-making is a part of good decision-making. It’s not practical to have one without the other.

As a forty-something-year-old, I’ve made several decisions throughout my lifetime. Not just in my career but my life choices in general. And believe me, I’ve made several bad choices in both realms. Thankfully, I’ve made some good ones too.

But let’s start with the bad first. Before I get into that, I want you to understand that all of our decisions have led to who we are today. Altering any one of them could change the person we’ve become. Therefore, even though it was my greatest/biggest regret, I can’t undo it. And even if I could, I don’t know that I would. Because it helped in my journey to becoming the man I am today.

My biggest regret

My biggest regret would have to be marrying my first wife. After all, she’s my ex-wife for a reason. I didn’t marry her out of love because I didn’t love her. Nor did I marry her for her looks. Nope, I married her out of convenience.

I had just joined the Army and was going away for at least four years. My proposal to her was, “Marry me now or you’ll never see me again.” That was my proposal, word-for-word. She turned me down. Who could blame her? Unfortunately, as time got closer, she had a change of heart. A decision I wish I could undo.

That marriage consisted of primarily us arguing and her cheating on me. In the end, God works all things for our good.

My biggest success

Because I don’t want to end on a downer, it’s important to acknowledge my biggest success. As you know, success is measured in different ways by different people. What looks like success to one person might look completely different to another.

When we think of success, most people think of career advancement, financial freedom, status achievements, etc. I see all of those as potential successes. But my biggest success is being married to my beautiful wife. This year, 2022, we will celebrate 19-years of marriage. Before meeting her, my longest relationship was with my ex-wife. That marriage technically lasted almost 6-years. In reality, it lasted less than 1.

After my divorce, I struggled to maintain a lasting relationship.

My wife and I didn’t date for several years before we decided to tie the knot. Heck, we didn’t even know each other for a month. We had known each other for less than 2-weeks, when we said, “I do.”

We met online on a Sunday. She contacted me. Throughout the week, we messaged each other and spoke on the phone. That Friday, we met in person for dinner. We talked and laughed. There really wasn’t much eating going on. And then I asked her to marry me. She says that I was crazy for asking her, and she was even crazier for saying yes. The following Friday, we got married at the courthouse.

My ex-wife and I knew each other for a few years before I reluctantly asked her to marry me. As I said earlier, it was out of convenience, not love. With my (current) wife, I excitedly asked her to marry me the first night we met.

Great success doesn’t come easy

Being married to my wife is such a big success because it hasn’t been easy. No, it’s been extremely tough at times. Several years into our marriage, she told me that the first couple of years were difficult because she was trying to sabotage it. She had been married before too. Her ex had abandoned her. In her mind, it was only a matter of time before I would too. I’ve had a hand in the potential demise of our marriage as well. I’ll get into that a little later.

Both of our children were high-risk pregnancies. In early 2005, my wife was pregnant with our first child. She wasn’t feeling right, so she went to get checked out. A year before this, she had had a miscarriage. Even though she was further along than the time before, there was still the possibility of it happening again.

When she went in, at 23 weeks, they told her that she was going into premature delivery. She went straight to the hospital and was checked in. For the next 4 weeks, so had to lay on a hospital bed in an inverted position.

Unfortunately, after a month in the hospital, she had to go into emergency surgery because her water broke. During the pregnancy, she had developed a fibroid. The doctors knew about it but said they’d remove it during the delivery. Well, it had grown to be nearly the same size as our baby girl. In order to get her out, the doctors had to take the fibroid out first. With time was not on our side, plans to take her out first had to be altered.

“Wow, that’s a lot of blood.”

It was not an easy or quick process. And my wife lost a lot of blood in the process. While sitting next to her in the surgery room, I looked down and saw the blood. I joke how I almost said, “wow, that’s a lot of blood.” But I kept it to myself, for the time being.

Our daughter, born in 2005, was born at 27 weeks. She weighed 2 lbs. 5 oz. The doctors didn’t think she’d live. In April, she’ll be turning 17.

Because of what happened with her, our son was treated as a high-risk pregnancy as well. I was in the Army at the time, stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia. My wife went back home to deliver our son. She took our daughter with her.

The pregnancy went much smoother. There was no premature delivery. She didn’t have any complications leading up to the delivery. Due to the circumstances with our daughter, they planned to deliver him at 36 weeks instead of 40.

I flew back to be there during the delivery and recovery. Everything went smoothly. After her recovery, she was allowed to go home with our son.

The following day, she told me that something wasn’t right. At first, we thought it was just part of the recovery. It didn’t take long for her to realize it was something different.

Our son was okay, but she wasn’t

I took her back to the hospital. We went directly to the emergency room. And it was a good thing that we did. Her body was not recovering well. It was her organs shutting down.

She was admitted and would remain there for another week.

I was now taking care of our daughter, who was a toddler, and our newborn baby boy. He didn’t have his days and nights worked out yet, and our daughter was all too busy during the day. Sleep is overrated anyway, right?

My wife said that she kept focusing on Jesus the entire time she was in the hospital. She talked to people about Him, while she was in there. I’m pretty sure a couple of nurses were saved, during that time.

We’ve had many other trials in our marriage. Losing our house because I had lost my job. Having to move in with her parents. Being separated because of the Army. My battle with depression and alcoholism, while in the Army. The list goes on and on.

But our struggles have made us stronger. And God was the center of it all. She says, “He was the glue that kept us together.” We’re still not perfect; in any way, shape, or form. We still have our struggles and disagreements. And we’ve learned to get through them a lot quicker and easier. With God’s help, of course.

It’s interesting how my greatest success and regret have to do with marriage. Marriage can be a wonderful experience or a nightmare. But I wouldn’t have had my greatest success had I not gone through my biggest regret.