Choices

A new year has arrived!  In true procrastination fashion, Happy New Year! (and I still write 2014 when dating things...should be up to speed by....let's go with February).

“We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.”  Seneca (Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD) 

I enjoy social media (ex. Facebook) for the opportunity to share encouragement, pictures, witty quips and quotes, etc. However, sometimes those quips and quotes can hit a bit to close to home OR maybe it's just the day I see it I am reminded of something going on in my or a friend/family member's life. Then those things roll around in my brain making me deal with stuff I would rather not deal with.

One that stuck out recently is: Doing nothing is a choice.

Ouch! Think about that for a couple seconds. Let it sink in.

Even when we are "doing nothing", our bodies breathe, heart beats, blink, etc. However, practically every waking moment we are faced with choices of the big, but usually small seemingly inconsequential magnitude. 

When we are children, our choices are often made for us. It is a wise parent that allows their child to start making little choices in preparation of the much larger choices they will face when the world and friends will be more than willing to assist them in their choice making.

It is always easier to see when looking back that there are certain choices we make that may have been made differently with more knowledge or thought or "if I knew THEN what I know NOW". Even those choices, beget new choices when needing to figure out what do you do NOW that you do know what you know, you know? (You might need to go back and read that part over!)

Then you throw regular day-to-day life in with some stress and sometimes some not-so-regular stress..... No wonder people start to feel so overwhelmed!

Technology has helped us do many things better, easier and more quickly which is WONDERFUL! Except for the fact that sometimes TOO much of anything can be a not so good thing.

By choosing one thing you are not choosing another. From my own life: Candy Crush or www.biblegateway.com ? CHOICES!

“We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision.” Gary Collins 

So, my choice for now will be to learn to love myself regardless of the choices I have made in the past. I will give myself grace to make informed choices from here on out. I will realize that there will be days my choice will be to go back to bed and not deal with whatever it is right then. More than likely, "it" will still be there when I wake up (hopefully) in a better mood. 

If you made the choice to read this far, thank you! Make good choices (even if temporarily the choice needs to sometimes be "nothing")
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While looking up verses for "choice", it was interesting that for most of the Bible "choice" was used as another word for best. hmmmmm.

Romans 8:19-21 (NIV) For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.