Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life. Louise Hay
I’ve been listening to Joyce Meyer while I paint. One of the things I like about her is she talks about what she has gone through, the lessons she’s learned along the way, and how we each have lessons to learn all the time.
I’ve written before how I believe faith gives us strength to draw on that if we didn’t have faith what would we draw on? Where would we find the strength when we feel we don’t have the power to go on?
Assisted suicide will be available to the severely depressed by next year in Canada if the reports I’m hearing are correct. I worry some people; especially young people with depression might give up on life, themselves, and the probability that they have better days ahead.
We know people who profess a deep belief in God also face depression so it is not that finding faith in something greater than ourselves is the answer, but one of the passages that Mom and Dad talked about the most was that we must, “Endure to the end.”
Why would it be important to endure to the end if in the enduring we weren’t to learn things we might not learn any other way? Joyce Meyer endured sexual abuse by her father and now says she wonders if part of her having to endure that is so she can help others who have had to endure it. She said she used to think, “If only I hadn’t been sexually abused.”
We have to be careful when we use, “if only,” we could have done, been, accomplished, believed, achieved, or aimed at something better than what we have. We are who we are, we are where we are, and we’ve experienced what we’ve experienced, we can’t change the past but we can go forward and examine each choice we have to make, and decide to make the most positive choice we are capable in that moment.
We won’t be perfect and the choice that seemed best might not turn out to be the best, and we have to live with that and forgive ourselves. Sometimes we have to face life going forward knowing some of the things we enjoyed most in life are behind us. If we can find the faith to know that there are still things ahead that will bring us joy, and make our hearts sing even if we don’t know what they are yet we can continue to take the next step and the one after that.
We see our life when we look backward, but we can’t see our life going forward. Going forward is always a leap of faith. We might need faith as we start a marriage, family, new job, business, or retirement. We may need to move to a new locale and leave behind all we’ve known for years. We may be the partner left behind because of death or divorce. Changes to our health may mean we can’t live the life we thought we could live.
If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. Lao Tzu
Today I am going back to the gym. I can’t believe it has taken me this long, but it is hard to fit things back into our lives once we’ve moved something into that time slot, even if it is just sitting in front of the TV after dinner. In preparation, I made a big dinner last night so we would have leftovers tonight. My plan is to go right after work before I settle into something else and with dinner made I have no excuse.
We may think about how to fit exercise into our life. But, at a certain age, if we don’t make time to keep ourselves fit and healthy, we won’t end up fit and healthy in our later years. When I look at Joyce Meyer I think there is a woman that is aging well, and she says she has been going to the gym for eleven years. This means she didn’t start going to the gym until she was probably in her sixties.
If we don’t have an active life we will have to bring activity into our lives in some way, because inactivity is not conducive to healthy aging. The more we do, the more we can do, and we may look back at things we thought we couldn’t do and wonder why we even thought it would be a challenge. This might be dealing with a difficult person, dealing with a physical challenge, making a change in our lives, or accepting a change we didn’t want. Whatever we are facing we have to go through it. If we go through it believing we can make the best of it, learn some lessons, and find the strength to face even greater challenges as we forge on in life we will have a better life than if we face everything with a poor attitude.
The best or the worst ahead of us may be up to how we look at things, and the attitude we bring to our lives.
In life, we tend to get what we expect. Start expecting the best for yourself. Since life is a do-it-yourself project, why not also believe in miracles? You have the freedom of choice. Why not expect miracles to occur in your life? Change your thinking to change your life. To do this write your goals, work hard, be smart, and expect the best. Make miracles happen. Mark F. LaMour
Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you’re wasting your life. Jackie Robinson
Look at what you’ve got and make the best of it. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Unknown
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
