This phrase has been coming to me a lot the last few months, so I've been pondering on it lately and it got me thinking back over my life.
We are all faced with challenges and choices as we go through life. Some of these challenges are of our own making, because of choices that we made, while other challenges we go through are completely out of our control. Challenges help make us who we are, we can choose to allow challenges to strengthen us, or defeat us. The choices we make during times of struggle can determine whether we catapult ourselves forward, or stay stuck in the problem.
A lot of what determines if we move forward and grow, or begin to shrink, is our perspective. While we can't always choose our situations and circumstances, we can choose our outlook on them. Will you choose to find the positive in the situation, even if it's hard to find? Or will you choose to look at the negative?
I took the ABATE class to learn how to ride motorcycles when I was about 23 or so. One of the main things they taught you is to always look where you want to go, because that is where the bike will automatically go. Never look at the curb, or the ditch, etc. or that's where you'll end up.
So, when something unexpected, unfortunate, or down right tragic happens in our life we must choose to look to the place we want to go from that place. Positive can come from EVERY negative situation that we face. It may be hard to see while you're still in the midst of the trial, but if you CHOOSE to look for the positive (or the negative), you will find it. But, you get to CHOOSE! And what you choose to focus on, is where you'll head, just like with the motorcycle. Look where you want to go, focus on that! Don't look at the curb, or the negative possibilities even the current circumstances. You must look where you WANT to go in order to overcome and not be a statistic.
Challenges and difficulties make us who we are, they develop character in us. We shouldn't run from challenges, rather face them head on, because we can become better from them.
Do you believe you can overcome the challenge you are facing? Do you believe there are choices you can make that will alter the path you are on? What do you believe?
Growing up it was just my mom and I, I didn't meet my dad until I was in my mid 20s. She never dated or married, so there wasn't a man in my life.
According to statistics 70% of teen pregnancies occur in fatherless homes and 9x more likely to drop out of school when in a fatherless home. There are a lot more statistics that go along with being raised in a fatherless home that I'm not going to go into. I mention these two, because these are the ones that I experienced.
At 16 my boyfriend and I found out we were pregnant. I remember him going to tell his parents, I didn't go with him. He came back and said his dad wanted to know when we were going to get married... That wasn't what I wanted, but I was afraid to say that I did not want to do that, so that's what we did.
Nothing like being 16, extremely pregnant and getting married at the court house.
Also, during that time, I dropped out of school. I was exhausted and so nauseous, I remember pulling over on the side of the road on my way to school to get sick. The plan was to homeschool, I even ordered the books, but I never did it.
After my daughter was born I did go get my GED. I had always wanted to be a dental hygienist, since I was a little girl. My mom said I started talking about it when I was about 8 years old, and never changed my mind. But I felt like school was completely out because I was married, had a baby, we had bought a house, etc.
So, yeah, ticking off those statistics of being raised in a home without a father present pretty well at this point.
When my daughter was still in an infant seat I remember going into a local appliance/electronics store. It was my husband and I and we had our daughter with us. I was barely 17 and he would've been 19, so young. We went in to buy a bigger TV. I remember standing there for about 25 minutes and never had a salesman come up to us. After a bit I realized that there were other people that had come in after us and where being helped, but we were being ignored. And I can imagine what it looked like. We were clearly extremely young, with a baby. They probably assumed we didn't have the money to buy anything and weren't going to waste their time. One of us finally went and got a sales person, we bought our TV and left. I never went back to that store. That experience made me angry, at the time I didn't realize it, but looking back I think that was one of the experiences that started to make me think differently.
The marriage didn't last long, it was extremely volatile. There were lots of lies, emotional abuse, nasty fights, etc. I left sometime before my daughter's 2nd birthday.
By getting out of that situation I started thinking about my hopes and dreams again. I decided to apply to the dental assisting program, because the closest dental hygiene program was an hour away. In my mind I didn't see how that could ever work, given my situation. But there was an assisting program a few minutes from home, so that's what I did.
In the dental assisting program you had to do rotations in a local dental office and they had a faculty member that would come to the office and watch you for a bit and grade you. During one of these times I mentioned that I wanted to go to dental hygiene school and was thinking I would just stay in school after graduation and start my prerequisite courses for the hygiene program. The instructor's response was, "Oh you'll never get in, I wouldn't waste your time". This was another incident that just made me mad. Something inside of me said, "Watch me".
I also started to realize that I was a statistic, and that, for some reason pissed me off to no end. I was ticking off all the boxes of those statistics out there:
-No father in my life, more likely to get pregnant...check
-No father in my life, more likely to drop out of school...check
-No father in my life, less likely to further education...semi-check
-Married under the age of 18, more likely to divorce in the first 10 years...check
and if I kept going being a statistic, I knew what the statistics were that we would live in poverty and that my daughter would go on most likely to also make poor choices.
Luckily, I got a job out of dental assisting school with a family (dentists that were brothers) that encouraged me to keep going to school. When it came time to apply for hygiene school, I was second guessing myself, but they were there saying to do it and telling me that the obstacles I was seeing were able to be overcome. Would it mean hard work? Yes. Would it mean sacrifice for a short time? Yes. But the end result would be a career that would allow me to take care of my daughter well, we would never have to worry about living in poverty.
They helped me to look to the place where I wanted to go, rather than looking at where I was now. Driving an hour one way, five days a week. How was I going to get my daughter to and from school (she started kindergarten). Could I handle a rigorous program, driving back and forth, a child, etc?
About the time I started hygiene school I started going to a new church, which preached the importance of your words and your thoughts, which reinforced for me the importance of the choices you make. And the simple fact that we have freewill and we can choose a different path if we don't like the one we are on.
The pastor, who is now my uncle ( I married his nephew), one day gave me a book titled Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapian. It was basically quit thinking negative and feeling sorry for yourself. I started reading it the day he gave it to me. Got a few chapters in and had a pity party because I thought he was telling me I was a hot mess. Which I was. But that's not what he was trying to convey to me, we all already knew that, lol. He was trying to tell me there was a different way, there was a fork in the road and I had the choice which one I wanted to go down. Continue down my current path? Or try something different?
So, I put on my big girl pants and decided I was not going to allow myself the pity party. I've heard the only people that attend that party is yourself and the devil, hahahahaha...I think that's the truth. Nothing good comes out of those parties.
I finished the book and determined to make some changes. It's been an ebb and flow since then, you get to flowing pretty good and then you ebb, but once you get flowing again, you flow a little farther the next time.
Well, guess what, I did it, I finished school. Yes, I had help. But you know what? You may not be able to see how you're going to get from point A to point B, but if you don't ever start moving towards point B, I guarantee you'll never get there. If you just start, take the first step, then you will be able to see where the next step is. Keep doing that and before you know it you'll be there. Don't worry about the things you can't do anything about, just focus on the things you can change and start changing things one at a time.
You can't expect different outcomes if you continue to do the same things and make the same choices. You must make different choices.
Over the years I have been extremely blessed with good friends, opportunities that literally changed my life and trajectory. I have not allowed myself to be a victim and I refuse to be a statistic.
Fast forward and here we are in 2022, my daughter is 24, she graduated from Purdue a few years ago and moved to Denver last year.
When I was diagnosed in 2020 with colon cancer, Rodney and I decided from the very beginning that we were going to choose to be positive and believe for the best, for healing in my body. It all happened so fast and the second surgery was rough, so I was literally just trying to focus on keeping food down. There wasn't much mental capacity for anything more.
But I had a sense in my spirit that it wasn't my time to go, so we just kept plugging along through chemo.
I was desperate for some sort of normalcy in my life by the time 2021 rolled around, I was able to work a day here and there, I'd be in the bathroom getting sick still at times between patients, and go home and sleep for 13 hours, and then it would take a day or two to recover. But, just getting out there and taking a step towards living life again helped so much.
Then, in March of 2021 I started having pain, it took a few months to find, but I had ovarian cancer diagnosed. The process was so long and drawn out, it was months of pain, which got pretty bad towards the end. There is definitely a mind battle when you are in pain, or otherwise symptomatic. But, in the midst of that we must choose our focus. Don't ignore symptoms, that's not what I'm saying. Test, assess, address (as Dr. Nasha Winters says) and then choose what you are going to focus on. Remember, what you focus on is what you will head towards.
Leading up to surgery I played Rattle by Elevation Worship over and over and over and over. I needed something I could put my focus on that was positive and speaking life because I knew if I chose to look at the statistics, they weren't great.
Guess what?! It doesn't matter what the statistics say!!!! I am not a statistic, and neither are you! I REFUSE to be a statistic. Could I be a statistic? Sure, that would be the easy way out.
In the last year I've had ten + people come up to me, text or call and say, "You will live and not die and declare the works of the Lord". Not all at once, over the course of several months. I was bouncing between churches at that time and every week someone would come up to me, didn't matter what church I was at that week, and say they felt like they were supposed to tell me this. Some of the people didn't even know me or what was going on with me, they just felt like they were supposed to tell me that. This time around I didn't have the deep sense of "knowing" that it wasn't my time to go, like I did with the colon cancer. But this gave me something to put my focus on, something that breathes life, not death.
If you see that you are heading down a path that you don't like the odds of statistically, begin to make choices that will lead you down a different path. Find people that are where you want to be, what you want to be like and surround yourself with them. Some things and friends may need to be removed from your life in order to change the trajectory of things. Maybe for a season, maybe indefinitely, don't worry about that right now.
It's not enough to just say you don't want to be a statistic, you must determine to take actionable steps to change your thinking.
Change your perspective, change your life.
Surround yourself with people that will speak positivity and life into you, encourage you to seek wisdom, but be fearless.
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