Regrets....

While on my mission, we had monthly interviews with our Mission President, each month I looked forward to sitting across from this man whom I had come to love as a father & chat about my mission, my expectations, my testimony, my investigators, my companions, etc. Each month his sweet wife would also meet with us for a moment, to look at our investigator book & chat about how we were getting along - understanding the unspoken words only a woman could - & each month she would ask us a 'deep thought question'...I will never forget the one that made me think the most....She asked me "imagine you have been home for 10 years, you are at our reunion & your companion walks in, what is your first thought?" Now I know that she expected to hear something along the lines of "wow, I remember when we baptized so & so", or maybe "do you remember when we...", but the answer she got from me was "I regret so much about the time I served with you." Her look was one of shock, she couldn't believe her ears, but before she spoke, I said, "let me elaborate...you see I regret that I didn't work harder, that I didn't take every moment of companion study time & learn everything I could from you, I regret that my patience was short, my love sometimes conditional. I regret that we didn't pass out more books of Mormon, taught more families, I regret that you didn't have the best experience possible with me, that I was less than I could have been."
Now I know, you are probably thinking in your mind, well hello, nobody is perfect, what a high expectation to expect from yourself, etc....but you see I believe I understood that there was a way to be better, there was always something I could have done that would have been kinder, more patient, harder working, more & better than I could have been. I believe that I understand that there has to be regrets in order to have progression. If we didn't think there was any room for us to improve, we never would. The Atonement would not be working for us...
I know that I will still go through my life with regrets, but I also know that I am striving to be better & sometimes those regrets teach me the hardest lessons yet teach me in the most humble of ways!!!!