Responsibility

As long as what’s wrong in your life is someone else’s fault, you won’t be able to move on.

A really hard truth to swallow but the way we choose to view our circumstances will give power to someone: you choose who you give the power to.

There are things that others do that affect you. End of story. You can’t escape the ripples of others actions on your own life. Sometimes other people make decisions that directly affect you. These are the hardest for us to move past, because they feel incredibly unfair. The reality is you can’t control what others do that affects you. Their choices are beyond your authority.

You are only a bystander, however, insomuch as you choose to be.

No, you may not have wanted that to happen. The breakup, the job loss, the rumor. Whatever they did is done and you can’t do anything about that.

As long as you leave the responsibility on the other person, however, you are giving what happened to you the power to dictate your life. Past, present, and future.

Rewriting the narrative of what happened to you in your own mind can feel so unfair when we are used to being a victim, but in the long term it is the most freeing thing.

What happened to you doesn’t need to be “okay” in order for you to see how it helped you to grow. I don’t want to sound insensitive here - I struggled against this for months before realizing just how true it is in my own life. I’ve experienced some incredibly broken things because of decisions other people made. There are things in my story that are sins others committed. But I don’t need to hold onto that.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through what I’ve been through. I wouldn’t know compassion the way I do now. I wouldn’t know hope the way I do now. I wouldn’t be grateful the way I am now. I wouldn’t have peace the way I do now. I wouldn’t know God the way I do now.

There is no suffering that isn’t made worth it by increased depth of relationship with God.