“A wise person chooses the right road; a fool takes the wrong one”.  Ecclesiastes 10: 2 (NLT)

Life is full of choices.  Until recently I don’t think I truly understood what it meant to have real choices.  The word choice was never a part of my vocabulary.  Ironically, my whole life has been filled with choices I never knew I had or I didn’t take seriously.  As I focused on the word choice I was surprised at how little attention I gave to making decisions in my own life.  Prior to that I was blinded as to what was available to me.  As I continued ponder this thought, the choices I made throughout my life became clear:  some good; some not so good.  Good or bad, they were my choices.  They did belong to me.  When I realized these decisions were mine, I began to see that it might be a good idea to choose more wisely and deliberately.

Realizing I have a choice in my circumstances is liberating.  I have been, at times, debilitated by sadness; overwhelmed with darkness, or overtaken by strongholds I cannot seem to control.  During those times, I sat in my dark pit, throwing myself a pity party, complete with balloons and cake, and convinced myself that I had no choice.

I struggled in solitude so that I could feel sorry for myself.  I didn’t want anyone to cheer me up.  I wanted to be in the pit.  I deserved to be in the pit.  Let’s face it; we have all experienced this self destructive attitude at some point in our lives; thinking our circumstances were out of our control (sometimes they are), and we had no choice but to be miserable.

While sitting in our loneliness, we listen to the enemy’s lies as he whispers into our ear.  “The choice was never yours.”  “You deserve to be miserable.”  “God doesn’t care about you.”  And while we wallow in our pit of despair, we convince ourselves that God has left us.  We fall prey to satan’s trap, which is to stay in misery.  He wants us to believe that we do not have choices, and he certainly does not want us to know we can have power over our choices.

In Ephesians 1:17, Paul reminds us to ask God to give us “spiritual wisdom and insight so that you [we] may grow in your [our] knowledge of God.”  We must remember to pray for wisdom, and ask God to reveal to us our choices.  Then we must respond differently.  Nothing changes until we make the choice to change.

Look, we have all felt powerless at times. We all end up in the pit at one time or another.   We scramble our way out, only to be pushed back in.   It’s not always our choice to fall into the pit, but it is always our choice to stay.

Acknowledgement of the fact that we have choices is the first step.  How we respond to our choices makes all the difference in the world.  And then we choose to fight with everything inside of us to persevere until we have made it out.

Peace be with you.

~Julia