Dear friend,
I want to share something with you today that I have never written down before.
Not in a sermon. Not in a homily. Not anywhere.
I am writing it down now because I think you need to hear it. And because at my age you start to understand that some things are too important to keep to yourself.
Over fifty years I have sat with a great many people in their final hours. In hospitals. In homes. In quiet rooms where the light comes through the curtains and everything feels very still and very close to something sacred.
I have held hands that were losing their grip. I have prayed over people who could no longer speak. I have watched families gather and say the things they wished they had said years earlier.
And I have listened.
What I am about to tell you is what I heard in those rooms. Not from one person. From hundreds. Across five decades. Across backgrounds and beliefs and life circumstances so different from each other that the only thing connecting them was this: they were leaving.
And yet what they said at the end was remarkably the same.
I want you to hear it now. While you still have time to do something about it.
What Nobody Ever Regretted
In fifty years I have never once sat with someone in their final hours who said they wished they had worked more.
I have never heard anyone say they wished they had spent more time watching the news. Or argued more with people online. Or held onto their anger longer. Or worried more about things they could not control.
I have never heard anyone say they wished they had been right more often.
What I have heard falls into a very small number of things. The same things. Over and over. For fifty years.
They wished they had told the people they loved that they loved them. More often. More clearly. Without assuming it was understood.
They wished they had forgiven sooner. Not for the other person. For themselves. The ones carrying unforgiveness at the end were the most burdened. The ones who had forgiven — even things that seemed unforgivable — seemed lighter. More ready.
They wished they had worried less. Almost every single one. The fears that consumed decades of their lives — the financial worries, the health anxieties, the endless what ifs — almost none of them came to pass the way they feared. And the hard things that did happen were survivable after all. The worry cost them more than the actual pain ever did.
And they wished they had prayed more. Not attended more services or followed more rules. Prayed more. Talked to God more. Trusted Him more with the things they spent their lives trying to control themselves.
What They Said About God
This is the part I want you to sit with.
I have sat with people who spent their whole lives in church. And people who had not prayed since they were children. People whose faith was strong. And people whose faith had been buried under decades of disappointment and doubt and distance.
And at the end something happened that I have never been able to fully explain.
The ones who had drifted far from God almost always came back.
Not dramatically. Quietly. A request to pray together. A question about whether God still accepted someone who had been gone so long. A whispered confession of something they had carried for decades.
And every single time I told them the same thing.
Yes. He still accepts you. He never stopped.
The parable of the prodigal son is the most repeated story in all of Scripture for a reason. The father does not wait for the son to reach the house. He sees him coming from a long way off and he runs. He runs toward someone who wasted everything. Who came back with nothing but the decision to come back.
God runs.
I have watched Him run in hospital rooms more times than I can count. In the final hours of lives that looked from the outside like they had moved very far from faith.
And every time I have thought the same thing.
He was just waiting for them to turn around. This whole time. Just waiting.
What They Said About Fear
The people who were most afraid at the end were not the ones who had lived the hardest lives.
They were the ones who had spent their lives afraid.
Fear had been their companion for so long that they did not know how to let it go even when they needed to most. The habit of fear had become so deep that peace felt foreign.
And the people who were most at peace at the end were almost always the ones who had practiced trust. Not perfect faith. Not lives without doubt. But people who had developed the habit over a lifetime of bringing their fear to God and leaving it there.
Lord I cannot carry this. I am giving it to you.
That prayer said consistently over a lifetime changes everything about how a person dies.
And it changes everything about how a person lives.
What This Means For You Right Now
I am writing this on a Friday. You are about to go into your weekend.
There are things on your mind. Things you are worried about. Things you have not forgiven. People you have not told what they mean to you.
I want to give you something specific to do with that.
Not a general encouragement. Something specific. Because the people I have sat with in their final hours did not need more inspiration. They needed more action. And they ran out of time to take it.
You have not run out of time yet.
This Weekend's Action Points
Tell someone you love that you love them today. Not when you feel like it. Not in a text. Call them. Say it out loud. Do not assume they know. The people in those final rooms almost always assumed the people they loved knew how much they were loved. Most of the time those people needed to hear it said.
Forgive one thing this weekend. You know what it is. You have been carrying it. Write it down on a piece of paper. Pray over it. Then tear the paper up. You are not forgiving because what happened was acceptable. You are forgiving because carrying it is costing you your peace. And your peace is worth more than being right.
Pray out loud today. Not a formal prayer. Just a conversation. God I am worried about this. I do not know how it is going to work out. I am trusting you with it. That is enough. That has always been enough. The people who died most peacefully were the ones who had been having that conversation with God for decades. Start today if you have not already.
Write down three things you are grateful for before you go to sleep tonight. Not big things. Small things. The people who were most at peace in their final hours were almost always people who had cultivated gratitude as a daily practice. Gratitude and fear cannot fully occupy the same heart at the same time. Choose gratitude deliberately this weekend.
If you have a grandchild or child you have been distant from — reach out this weekend. One message. One call. No agenda. No theology. Just I was thinking about you. That is enough to start with. The door does not have to open all the way at once. It just has to open a crack.
One Last Thing
If you have been away from God for a long time — if the distance between where you are and where you used to be feels too great to cross — I want you to know something I have told hundreds of people in their most vulnerable moments.
He is already running toward you.
You do not have to clean yourself up first. You do not have to have the right words. You do not have to deserve it.
You just have to turn around.
That is the most consistent thing I have learned in fifty years of sitting with the dying. The ones who turned around — whenever they turned around — always found Him already running.
Do not wait as long as some of them did.
God bless you and everyone you love. Have a peaceful weekend.
— Father Thomas ✝️