life.

Isn't life such a beautiful gift?  

What I love most about it is that life always gives you opportunities to do better.  It's like a well oiled machine, this thing called life and it cries out for us to get good use out of it's components.  

What I have found lately and what has been on my mind most is the ability that we have been given, simply by living.  We have this grand ability to find out exactly who we are, reinvent that person, and then start all over again if we so choose.  And that's the key to it all, is that we have this amazing invitation to choose.

 Simple choices and complex ones are all in our grasp.

Short hair or long.

Married or unmarried.

Healthy or unhealthy.

Christian or temptation.

Give up or keep going.

Hamburger or Nuggets.

Love or hate.

We're faced with choices almost every minute of every single day.  Quite honestly, I enjoy choices.  I like to make one and then change it again later.  I am a woman who is constantly figuring out who I am, embracing her and then starting over again in a new direction.  You see, this journey with Mabel hasn't defined me.  It hasn't changed me to the point that I can't escape it.  It is intricate and it's gears have grinded me some, but it hasn't necessarily been a bad thing.  It has been eye opening, shape shifting, and life changing for sure.  But it has been an amazing part of figuring out what exactly life has for me and where I can go from here, embraced  in the thick of it.

 I'm wound tightly in her.  And I choose to be.  

I find that you can wake up at the start of a new day and choose bitterness and envy, or you can choose joy.  It's never been difficult for me to choose between the emotions that we all have.

Joy has always come very natural to me.  And even in this panicked, frightened, silent state that has encompassed my last year, I still feel like I have chosen joy.  Because ultimately, it is not this one part of my life that will dictate the rest.  It is a huge part.  It has altered everything.  But when I look back in my life, I pray it is simply a slice of the woman that God has molded and created me to be.  I pray that I have embraced it fully enough to experience the depths of it's sorrow and the heights of it's happiness while also letting go enough to remember that this is simply a state in which will pass away as something else rushes in to claim it's fullness and weight.

So in the middle of the journey, I have consistently chosen joy.

 For now, it is by far the most elaborate test of who I am that I have ever experienced.  My ideas have changed, my opinions have changed, my perspectives have changed.  It's all different and it's all new.  I feel a little bit of shame looking back at the woman that I once was with all of my strong opinions and sharp accusations.  But then I let grace wash over my thinking and remember that there was no way for the old me to realize what I know now without first going through this time in my life.  And for that I'm incredibly thankful.

 I will probably always be figuring out who I am and what I'm meant to be.  I hope that I never feel content in myself completely because without some sort of choices, there is no journey.  

I happen to enjoy the journey-no matter how hard or long.  I find pleasure in filling the crevices with deep thoughts and analytical portions of myself.  It is part of growth.  

It is part of choice.

The Lord put us here and armed us with the weapons we need to make every choice we will ever be faced with.  We have great knowledge and understanding and He purposely put us here to make choices.  

After all, He wants us to choose Love.

He desires for us to choose Him.

And wrapped in that, ultimately, is the gift of Joy.

Sometimes when I stop and remember that I am still smack dab in the hardest obstacle of my life I try desperately to remind myself that I have the choice to grow weary and give up, or I can choose this life and all that in entails and cling to joy.

Life is most certainly an incredible machine.

I'm ready to grind it's gears with joy, passion and grace.

What about you?