Giving Up

I spoke with a friend tonight for a little bit.  She’s been feeling like she can’t take much more.  Life has a way of doing that.

You see the things that you have to do and the outlook is bleak and daunting.  I understand.

Here is something I discovered sometime in the past few years.  That bleak and daunting feeling is tied to helplessness.  You feel like you have little to no control over the things you have to do in life.  And you feel trapped.

What if you changed that?

What if you took that control back?  Impossible, you say?  You can’t just change things in life that easy, you think!

But you can change you.  You can get up in the morning and decide not to run away.  You can say, “I don’t want to deal with X today.  But I am choosing to deal with X.  Because I know that if I deal with X today, it will lead me down a road that is better.”  Nothing physically will change with that decision.  But you will change on the inside.  You will be empowered to take on your day.  The day doesn’t have to run you over.  You can stand and meet it.

And when things get too much.  You can make a decision to change.  You can decide, “Maybe this is the path that I need to be on.  But today, I need to rest.”  No one is strong 100% of the time.  Sometimes you have to rest and recharge so that you are ready to take on the battles of life another day.  And you can do it!

There’s a song that I’m pretty sure I quoted on here not long ago by Randy Travis and Linda Davis called, Make It Thru.  It’s an excellent song, YouTube it!!  Part of it goes, “I’m a prisoner here in this hall of kings.  I’m gold, I’m jewels, I’m a diamond ring To be given as a token of God’s affection.  The law says I’m their property, But my heart and soul belong to me.  They can hold me but I’ll never be in their possession.”  Good lyrics!  In life, we feel like prisoners some days.  But no one can ever take all of us without our permission.  Choose otherwise.

Tonight I am thankful for the act of choosing, even when it looks like there is no choice.  Empowerment doesn’t always come from a job title or someone’s blessing on your life.  Most genuinely, it comes from within . . when you give yourself the right to choose your day, your hour, your minute.  Choosing to stand when you could run, is a choice to be aware of; it turns you from a victim to a fighter!