Yep. Your choice. Every day when you wake, whatever happens next is up to you – your attitudes and beliefs which support and drive your choices, decisions, and actions. This should empower you not overwhelm. This should give you the realization that whatever happens in the day, you are in control – in charge. And… if you don’t have this mindset, who is it that it’s ‘up to’? Why would you think/believe that it isn’t up to you? And, more important, if it isn’t up to you – who IS in charge?
The question that begs itself is why would we ever want someone else in charge of who we are and what we do – our dreams and hopes? Even during the rough patches, the times of intense stress – why would someone else make better decisions for us than us? Would we attempt, eventually, to wrestle the ‘control’ back to our hands? While the burden of ‘up to you’ may seem huge, our life is ours… or is it? Are we willing to ‘pay the price’ of being us or pay the price of giving this control over to others? Who has this right in your life?
Responsibility is a big word but it undergirds everything we are, we do. It is extraordinarily important that we act on this knowledge and not just give lip service. What we do and don’t do, say and don’t say determines who we really are. But the period is provided by our willingness to accept our responsibility for what we do and say – the positive and negative. And our determination and actions are up to us and no-one else. Nor can we ‘blame’ our upbringing, our ‘breaks’ or lack, others, family, etc. Truly, the bucks stops with us.
None of these are easy lessons to learn and, I suspect, we continue to learn them because there are no end of voices attempting to tell us who we are, what we should do, how we should think, what we should believe. But even these lessons are up to us. The only one who has a ‘claim’ on us is the Lord who bought us with a great price that we might live victorious. This is true for all who have accepted Jesus as Lord. His claim on us is one of love. He wants only the best for us and He provides aides for us to make those decisions. However, it still is… up to you.
