Take Life by the Horns

 

Take Life by the Horns

I am not going to pretend life is always easy! There are so many struggles in life that so many face on a day-to-day basis. While I had an amazing childhood and was so lucky, I will hopefully get into that in later posts, I still had my share of struggles in life. I cannot pretend that my life was absolutely perfect because I am human, and we all struggle in this thing called life. In life we make many choices. Some are as simple as what am I going to have for breakfast or what color of shirt should I wear today (that one is easy for me, I am usually drawn to grey for whatever reason). Some choices are not as simple as do I pay this month’s rent or buy groceries. Everything is a series of choices in life, and our choices as much as we like it or not affect everything in life including other people. Life would be so much easier if our choices were just limited to us and not those around us.

In my life I was raised in a family that has always been extremely close. Even cousins married into the family were our cousins’ blood or no they were family and still are and are loved dearly! Even though having such an amazing family I had made choices in life that caused struggles for not just myself but my family. Those choices I never would have changed though! While it did cause some unfortunate struggles in life those choices also left me with some of the biggest blessings in life! When I was nineteen, I was blessed with a beautiful daughter. Her father was no longer in the picture and I thought I had screwed up both her life and my life. I still struggle seeing the hurt in her face when she sees other girls with their dads and she never had that special relationship, but she still had so much love from all of our family and church! Through that tough situation I was able to see who my friends truly were and how family should be. My family pulled together in supporting me and my daughter with all the love and help that we needed. My church became some of the closest friends and family anyone could have asked for, for my daughter and me. Along with that even though her dad wasn’t involved in her life his family welcomed us with open arms and not only does my daughter call them her family I call them mine as well!

As bad as some choices can be and you think that they may mess up your plans they really do not. It does not mess up your plans, they may be rearranged, and things may have to come in a different order, but they are not messed up. Your life is still beautiful! Live your life, let the struggles come and fight through them lean on friends and family! Live a beautiful life with the twists and turns you did expect! Live your life to get to the end of it with the goal in mind that you wanted your life to be your story.  They are not failures just bumps in the road, or wrong turns. You may not get U-turns in life but there are always forks. You may have had one wrong turn but there is always a fork that leads back to the path you wanted.

On the other hand, someone else choice may have led to problems you struggle with and you may feel you can not reach the plans that you had and that they were taken from you. That is a lie! No one can take what you want away from you. Do not give them that power. You may have lost a loved one because of someone else poor choice, you may have been injured in some way whether it is emotionally, physically or any other way but do not give that other person the power to take from you what you wanted out of life. Live your life the way you wanted love that person you lost with all your heart. Hold tight to their memories, hold tight to the love you felt for them, and the hardest part forgive the person you felt took it away from you. You do not ever forgive and forget that is not a thing we as humans can do, we do not have that ability. You can still forgive though. Forgiving is about not dwelling on them or what they took from you and constantly thinking about them getting what they deserve. Forgiving is moving on and not letting them have that control over your life. I once heard there can be forgiveness with out reconciliation. I believe that to be true. Reconciliation means to restore friendly relations in its definition. While forgiveness just means to remit or leave a person alone and to separate yourself. Reconciliation is when the other person has acknowledged their wrong and have apologized and both parties agree to moving forward together. In forgiveness you have a choice you can forgive and reconcile separating the debt from the person and working on rebuilding a relationship or if the situation is too toxic you forgive and separate yourself from that person. If the other does not acknowledge the wrongs they have done to you that is when you need to just forgive. If they ever acknowledge the pain, they caused you and apologize it is on you to determine if you do ever want to reconcile.

Live is too short to give others that much power over your life. Through these twists and turns in life know that you are in control but that your choices affect you and so many others. Take life by the horns and hold on tight! It is one crazy ride that is very much worth it!