{"id":1861,"date":"2012-06-30T11:58:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T16:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2012-06-30T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-30T17:00:47","slug":"my-greatest-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/30\/my-greatest-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"My Greatest Fear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My greatest fear was realized as I read an obituary this morning. It wasn&#8217;t in the newspaper, but in a history book. \u00a0I read in 2 Chronicles 21:20 about King Jehoram who died at age 40. It said <em>&#8220;He passed away, to no one&#8217;s regret&#8230;.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When you die and people write your obit in their minds, what will they say about you? There will be the fact: he passed away. But what about the regret factor? Will they care that you are gone? If not, you&#8217;ve still got time to change things.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want people to be sad when I die, in fact, I want there to be great rejoicing and celebration that Barry has crossed the finish line, ran the race well, and stepped into the gold medal stand of Heaven. But I hope there is a feeling of regret because the difference I was making will be missed.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of interesting thoughts about life and death. One t-shirt says &#8220;Live your life in such a way that the preacher won&#8217;t have to lie at your funeral.&#8221; A teacher says &#8220;stick your finger in a bowel of water and then pull it out quickly and see how big of a hole it makes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Since dying isn&#8217;t optional, here&#8217;s a great way to prepare for it: Take your eyes off of yourself and look for what you can do for others. At the end of your days there will be great wailing that you&#8217;re gone, because you were <em>making a difference!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My greatest fear was realized as I read an obituary this morning. It wasn&#8217;t in the newspaper, but in a history book. \u00a0I read in 2 Chronicles 21:20 about King Jehoram who died at age 40. It said &#8220;He passed away, to no one&#8217;s regret&#8230;.&#8221; When you die and people write your obit in their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1865,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jbarrywatts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}