Once upon a time...
There was a pretty young lady who met a very handsome man. His smile and his magnetic personality attracted her to him right away. As she got to know him, she saw glimpses of his potential that was just beneath the surface. The person he was deep inside is who she fell in love with. He fell in love with her as well and asked her to be his wife. They got married then had 2 beautiful sons.
Then one day, everything fell apart. The handsome young man was taken away and put into prison. The pretty young lady was left alone to raise their sons on her own. This was not the life she had imagined with her man. This was not the life she had dreamed of for her children. Everyone around her insisted that she should divorce her husband and move on with her life. “You deserve better!” they would tell her over and over.
The more she spent time with him...
The more they tried to convince her that she was making a mistake. Whenever she went to visit her husband in prison, she saw the devastation among the families who were there. She saw families falling apart because of the hardships of the incarceration. Hopelessness and helplessness was everywhere she looked.
How should this story end? Should she stay or should she go? Will her family fall apart, her children follow in the same path to prison? Perhaps she will meet another man, leave her husband and marry someone else. Or, maybe she will decide to fight for her family and stay with her husband. Who will tell her story?
You cannot coast through life only thinking day-by-day
This is the story of millions of women across the United States. They loved a man, then lost him to prison. Then, they had to decide what came next. Sadly, most of them let someone else write their story. They didn’t stop and think about what they wanted their lives to look like. So, they just took one day at time and let the road of life just take them wherever it led them. They didn’t believe they had a choice in determining the direction of their lives.
They didn’t have a plan, an outcome in mind. Living one day to the next day is just existing in survival mode. That is ok for a brief season while you get your wits about you and your feet under you. But you cannot coast through life by only thinking day to day. You have to look up and see further down the road so you will know if this is even the road you want to travel.
"Don't let someone else finish your story"
If I had let the world finish writing my story when Ron went to prison, our family would have fallen apart, my sons would have gone to prison, and I would still be on welfare. Thank God they didn’t get to write my story. I looked up and saw where I wanted my family to be. I intentionally began to do things that moved me closer to my goal of having a strong, healthy, permanent family (read more). It didn’t happen by accident. We wrote our own story and then we lived it out.
Don’t let someone else finish your story. Decide how you want it to turn out in the end and then begin to change the plot and character in your life so that the story leads you to the ending YOU choose. If you just float, you probably won’t like the place you find yourself—washed up on a shore you don’t want to be. Stop and examine where you are headed. If you don’t like this chapter of your life, make the next one better. Each chapter can be better and better as you build your character stronger and your family’s foundation more permanent.
You have the authority to consequently take charge of your own destiny. Now is the best time to adjust your course and head toward the destination you want.
I am rooting for you!
Cathy