(Everything that you see in Italics is taken from the book:
Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self by Sarah Ban Breathnach)
Many of us don't think of choice as a spiritual gift. We believe choices are burdens to be endured, not embraced. And so they become burdens. But after breath, is there a more precious gift than free will?
Your life at this exact moment... is a direct result of choices you made once upon a time.
Our choices can be conscious or unconscious. Conscious choice is creative, the heart of authenticity. Unconscious choice is destructive, the heel of self-abuse. Unconscious choice is how we end up living other people's lives. "The most common despair is... not choosing, or willing, to be oneself," the nineteenth century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard warns us, "[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself." This is how we always hurt the one we love. The one we shouldn't hurt at all. Our Self.
Creative, conscious choice gives us the power to stop swinging and remain in balance, at peace. Be still, woman, and know who you are.
The reason we're terrified of making choices, even little ones, is that we're convinced we'll make a wrong one... If you're anything like me, a lot of wrong choices got you where you are today and continue to keep you there.
We, not our outer circumstances, are the catalysts for the quality of our lives.
Bad choices should never be confused with wrong choices. Bad choices - and we have all made them - happen when we embark on sinuous stretches of self-destruction, usually with a smile. You don't ask your heart or a pal for advice. You don't ponder, and you certainly don't pray. Why? Because on the deepest intuitive level, you know that you shouldn't even be entertaining the thought of this choice. But you want to do it so badly that even its badness doesn't daunt you. In fact, it eggs you on. Quite frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn what anyone thinks at times like that, do we?
But our lives are not entirely shaped by the wrong and bad choices, thank God. There have been wise choices, good choices, strong choices, courageous choices, happy choices. Brilliant decisions. We just don't remember many of them. That's because we shrug off any good thing that arrives in our lives as if it were a fluke, a lucky break, a misdelivery. Certainly we don't give ourselves credit. Only when things don't work out, only when we make mistakes, or stumble on steps, do we feel responsible. Then we claim all the blame.
By not choosing, we allow others to choose for us.
Choice is destiny's soul mate.
As I read through all of this and more that related to the many choices in my life, it made me realize something - something important...
This journey to recovery this time around is harder and more of a struggle because I am not in a treatment center where I only have to comply and conform to what is being asked of me or required of me... No, it is different this time around. I have the choice - day in, day out - to decide what I am going to do. I face the choice to choose LIFE many times in one day...
Recognizing that I have a choice frustrates and irritates ED, but more than the recognition of the choice, when I do choose LIFE, he becomes even more disgruntled and comes over me with more intensity, trying to quench every bit of LIFE out of me!
When the choice is in my court all of the time, the real and true emotions are tested and come out. They rise to the top as I consider the choices before me.
I know that to have it any other way is not what I need right now, but it also makes each step of this journey so much harder and intense. If I don't make the right choices, I face failure and defeat. I can't blame anyone else for a bad choice or a wrong choice that I make. I have to take credit for whatever choice I make on a daily basis and throughout each and every day.
Sometimes it seems easier to only have to conform to a program or a plan, but in the end, I know that the journey that I am currently walking is facilitating a deeper healing on the inside of me because at each point of making a choice to give my body the round of intake that it needs and is calling for, I have to decide if I am worth the decision to choose LIFE.
Throughout the myriad choices that I am having to make on a daily basis right now, a vast array of emotions come into play... Many tears are shed... Fear creeps in... Anxiety comes like a flood... So many that I can't even recount them all...
Nonetheless, I am left with the following choice at every turn it seems: To choose life? or not to?
I understand completely, though we are on different journeys, I understand. May you feel His love surround you often throughout your days and nights as you continue this fight for your life.
ReplyDelete