This morning I was up early ready to send out an email blast to my subscribers. I had been working on this email for more than a day and a half. It’s a new platform and I couldn’t seem to get it to do what I needed. It was a technical issue. After a few months of wrestling with my littles and their sleep, trying to carve out a little time for me to focus on my business and on my music I was ready to quit. Like seriously on the verge of tears and ready to move on to something else in life. It seems so petty as I put words to my frustration. So. Petty.

I mean, I’m the one who decided to build a business, (in a country that is about as full of opportunity as it gets mind you) AND have four small children AND homeschool AND teach at their co-op AND get my health in order AND invest in people in need ALL at the SAME TIME. I’M the one who chose the plate for which to fill with all of these good foods.

Now how do I dine?

True adversity is not this…(although it sure feels like it every morning between four and five am) True adversity is the plot for which we do not choose. My cancer that has come back but more aggressively. My family members have been taken by a rebel regime. My brother was murdered. My husband lost his job and I’m miscarrying for the 5th time. My mother was sold into human trafficking and I’ve grown up in it. I’m a homeless addict. I can’t get out of bed because of illness or depression.

I’m really not talking about true adversity today. That’s a topic for another post.

It’s so easy to lose sight of how well we have it and what does go right. Our perspective truly guides our lives! I have so many choices!!! I can send my kids to public school. I can choose to not teach. I can choose to hire a company to send me food and hire someone to follow me around and yell at me every time I’m tempted by the doughnut case. I can stop investing in other people and simply invest in myself. I could hire a MAID. I could get a sitter for after school and I could bring in the MONEY.

That wouldn’t align with our values and I’d live in personal conflict. I am able to do those things, so I do. BUT My point is I’ve chosen my plate… and I’ve chosen how much my plate can hold. Now I must choose how quickly to consume what’s in front of me. I can gracefully take in only what I need for each day knowing that each morning my plate will replenish or I can be angry at the kids for always trying to eat off my plate. (They literally eat off my plate… I have to hide to eat sometimes!)

I can choose to be mad at every form of resistance I come up against every day. But what I really want… the person I really want to be… is the one that remembers, this, all of this, is my choice. Not my burden. Not my cross to bear. My choice.

So many, walk around thinking life is happening TO them when really they’re choosing for someone else to take the reigns. That’s still a choice! Some wallow in the consequences of their past choices. Also, a choice.

God doesn’t control us. Religion doesn’t control us. The government doesn’t control us (although some are very invasive). Our jobs don’t control us. Control is a facade. It does not truly exist. Any parent with a toddler or a teenager can attest to how control is mere perception. As soon as they know you can’t control them they are asserting their own agenda. Outside of abuse, there is no other-control. Only self-control or self-surrender.

Photo credit: ((No thoughts or ideas were taken from this article (I didn’t even read it). I just borrowed the image from: The Memoir Coach))