I’VE BEEN MEASURING MY LIFE WITH THE WRONG RULER

Have you ever looked back over your life and quietly wondered if you missed your purpose In this deeply personal conversation Pastor Charles Howse reflects on the questions that often come with age regret and reflection and explores what happens when we measure our lives by the world’s standards instead of heaven’s Discover why changing the ruler may change everything.

Transcript

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Welcome to The Tension Where Truth Lives. I'm Pastor Charles Howes. Before we really dive in today, I want to ask a quick favor. If these conversations have meant something to you, would you mind sharing this episode with someone else? Sometimes the greatest gift we can give another person is just letting them know they're not the only one asking the hard questions they've been carrying. Today is season one, episode nine, and honestly, I don't really know what to call this conversation yet. I think I'm still living inside it, if that makes any sense. You know, let me tell you something I've never really said out loud before. The older I get, the more often I catch myself looking backward. It actually surprised me when I realized it. I'm not an unhappy person, and I'm not living with a mountain of regret. God has been better to me than I ever deserved. I've been blessed to pastor for over 40 years, raised a family, and loved a lot of people along the way. I've buried people, I've watched prayers get answered, and I've watched others seem to go completely unanswered. I've laughed, I've cried, and I've lost people I never imagined losing. Somehow, through all of that, God has continued to be faithful. So this isn't coming from a broken place, it's coming from an honest place. Every now and then, usually early in the morning before the sun comes up, I'll catch myself thinking about decisions I made 20 years ago, sometimes 30 years ago. Not because I can change them, I know I can't. I just wonder about them. I wonder what would have happened if I'd made a different decision in those moments. I wonder if I stayed too long in some seasons of my life, or on the flip side, did I leave other seasons too soon? It's a strange kind of mental math, isn't it? I wonder if I spent enough time with the people who mattered most. I wonder if I confused being busy with being present. Did I spend too much time trying to become successful and not enough time simply becoming whole? Maybe getting older just does that to you. I don't know if it's just me, but I know it's real. Then something happened a few weeks ago that I can't seem to get away from. I found myself looking through old pictures. You ever do that? You start looking for one specific photo, and 30 minutes later, you've traveled through decades. There was this picture of me when I first started preaching. Oh, I look so young and so certain. I honestly believed I had life completely figured out back then. Then another picture of my children when they were little. Then people who aren't here anymore. There were dreams in those photos that I had forgotten I even had. Before long, I wasn't looking at photographs anymore, I was looking at different versions of myself. Then, without even realizing it, I started talking to those old versions of Charles, and I wasn't being very kind. I was saying things like, You should have known better, and you should have stayed longer, you should have tried harder, I told myself I should have been wiser than that. Then I stopped because something didn't feel right. I realized I was talking to myself in a way I would never talk to a friend. If a friend sat across from me and told me their story, I would offer them grace instantly. I would remind them that nobody gets every decision right. I'd remind them they did the best they could with what they knew at the time. Life is just complicated, right? But somehow, when it comes to my own life, grace gets a lot harder to find. Maybe you've never done that, but I have a feeling I'm not sitting in this conversation by myself. If we're honest, I think a lot of us quietly put ourselves on trial every single day. Nobody else is accusing us anymore, but we're accusing ourselves. We replay conversations nobody else remembers. We relive mistakes everybody else has already forgotten. We revisit dreams that never happen as if our entire life should now be judged by what didn't happen instead of what did. Here's the strange part though. The older I get, the less I'm actually disappointed by life. It's the way I measure it that disappoints me. I've been wondering lately if maybe those are two different things. Maybe life isn't the problem. Maybe the ruler is. Does that resonate with you? Maybe that's why some people with beautiful lives still feel like failures. They've loved deeply, raised families, survived impossible seasons, and kept showing up when quitting would have been easier. Yet they go to bed wondering if somehow they missed their purpose. I've been thinking about that a lot. I don't think I'm the only one who has ever quietly asked, did I spend my life well or did I just spend it? I've been carrying that question, and I think there are people listening right now who have quietly reached that same place. It's a heavy weight to carry. Maybe your question isn't about preaching, maybe it's about the marriage that didn't survive, or the business that never got off the ground. Maybe it's about the child you wish you could have parented differently, or retirement looking different than you imagined. Suddenly every decision feels heavier than it used to. Nobody prepares us for that. Nobody tells us there comes a season when you don't just count birthdays, you start counting opportunities. If we're not careful, we begin measuring our entire lives by the things that didn't happen. I've done that more times than I'd like to admit. I've measured my life by prayers that seemed to go unanswered, by relationships that ended, and by doors that closed. Every time I finished measuring, I always came to the same conclusion. I should have done more. I should have been more. Then one morning, a thought interrupted me. It wasn't loud, it was almost a whisper. It said, Charles, what ruler are you using? I sat there for a minute because I realized I had never questioned the ruler. I'd only questioned my life. Somewhere along the journey, I accepted somebody else's definition of success. I never stopped to ask if Heaven agreed with that definition. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I've stood beside too many hospital beds and too many gravesides to keep believing the world knows how to measure a life. I've seen what really lasts. I've buried people with impressive careers, and nobody talked about their careers at the end. They talked about the way they loved people. They talked about the neighbor who always showed up. They talked about the grandmother who kept everybody together. They talked about kindness and faithfulness. They talked about the man who quietly paid somebody's electric bill and never told a soul. Isn't that interesting? At the end of a life, the things we spent years chasing suddenly become the least important things anybody remembers. I started wondering if heaven has been measuring something else entirely. Maybe heaven isn't nearly as impressed with what impressed me. Maybe heaven wasn't counting promotions or titles or applause. Maybe heaven was counting every time I chose forgiveness when bitterness would have been easier. Maybe heaven was counting every quiet act of love that nobody else applauded. Maybe heaven was counting every time I stayed when walking away would have been understandable. Maybe heaven was counting faithfulness while I was busy counting achievements. I'm not saying dreams or goals don't matter, they do. Excellence matters. But maybe they were never supposed to be the ruler. If I measure my life only by what I accomplished, I'll always find something I didn't do. If I measure by what I earned, I'll always find somebody who earned more. But if heaven has been measuring love, compassion, and integrity, then maybe I've been failing a test heaven never gave. I think the greatest mistake I've made wasn't missing opportunities. It was believing my life could be reduced to a scorecard that heaven never created. Maybe that's true for you too. Before you decide your life has been a disappointment, you ought to ask one more question. Before I measure my life, whose ruler am I holding? Because if it's not heaven's ruler, I may spend the rest of my life calling myself a failure while heaven has been calling me faithful all along. That's a powerful shift in perspective, isn't it? This is Pastor Charles Howes. Thank you for letting me think out loud with you today. It means a lot to share these reflections. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and please make sure you're measuring your life the way heaven does.