It’s how you let it effect you…

You will be as happy as you make up your mind to be

Its not what happens to you its how you let it effect you

FREE WILL

People are not robots. We have been given free will and setting aside all of those predestination verses and I know the plans I have for you things and the understanding that God is really fully in charge of this deal called life.  You still get a free choice.  You still have a stake in your decisions.  You still get to choose to let God be the driver or to take the wheel yourself.

My husband and I are both intrigued by TV shows on addiction and recovery and jail.  Its not rare these days to have all or one of those things effect your life either directly or through a family member.  We both have our own stories as to how these things have entered our lives and tore them apart and how they have been rebuilt and recovered by God alone.  And we may like these shows because they remind us of where we’ve come from but I think we are drawn to the ‘change’ that we see in others.  The hope that someone might just get the idea that its not what happens to you, its how you let it effect you.  We are rooting for the lost to choose the way to abundant life.

But it got me thinking the other night as we watched ‘Intervention’.  We all get a choice. Years ago when I was fully partaking in the co-dependent lifestyle and desperately hoping my former husband would get sober and be the husband and father our family needed, I learned that the only person I can change is myself and started making changes in my own life that created a better future for me.  Whether or not someone gets sober, whether or not they get nice, we can make up our minds to be happy.  Sometimes you need to stop what you are doing and move on to find the place you should really be.

That part of my life could have destroyed me, it could have messed me up forever and it could be the baggage I carry around today and point to as the reason for my shortcomings and failures, but I made a choice to not let my circumstances define who I am.  Its not what happens to you, its how you let it effect you.  Isn’t that the truth?

What’s my secret?  Letting Jesus be Lord and author of my life.

Let him lead you and direct you.  Follow Him, he knows where he is going!  He knows that by focusing on Him, the ‘what happens to you’, has no power in HIS economy.  Filter everything through HIM, through prayer, through patience and let Him take your heart.  Its your choice.