January 18, 2011

Choices....

So lately I have been thinking a lot about choices.

How many times in a day do you make a choice? Probably hundreds, right? Little day to day choices about what to wear, what to eat, what cartoons to watch, how nicely to fold the laundry...the little things.

Growing up, my Dad constantly talked about choices. "You can make your choices, but you can't pick the consequences"...I heard this about a gazillion times.

In a lifetime people make millions of decisions that shape and mold their lives. Even when two people make the same decision the consequences can be drastically different.

There is the mom who walks away from her kids playing in the tub, not for more than a few moments. She walked down the hall to grab some clothes and noticed an unmade bed, and her baby boy almost lost his life. How do you find "normal" again?

There are the stupid teenagers who get in a fight and in the heat of the moment, take it too far. Several families forever changed.

And then there is the young man who for reasons that no one will probably ever understand, takes a gun to a grocery store and takes the lives of 6 innocent people and injures several more. What millions of choices led to him to that moment?

I am not offering any judgement or placing blame. That is not the point of this post. I have made so many stupid, negligent decisions in my life and luckily I have not been "caught" to badly by my own poor choices.

I have never pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger, but I have driven my car way too fast.

I have never beaten someone up (hard to believe, I know), but I have watched two boys beat the crap out of each other and stood by and laughed with my friends.

And I may never have had to look at my husband and tell him that my bad decision hurt our child, but I have gotten distracted. I have left them in the bath, the car, on the bed when they were little. They have run around the house with toothbrushes in their mouth and gotten lost at a football game - on my watch.

CHOICES...

It is time to re-focus.

It is not okay to stand by when I can intervene. It is not okay to let the little inconveniences or distractions stop me from doing what I know I should. It is not okay to neglect other people through the choices I make, because I get so tied up in my own "stuff" that I start to forget that the world doesn't revolve around my life.

Easier said than done?

Definitely. But, I am not sure I could live with the alternative.

4 comments:

  1. I love this post! I need to be more aware of my day to day choices and make sure they are ones that benefit my kids. Thank you!!!

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  2. Bethany, what a wonderful blog you have here, I'm not sure if it's new or not but it was a lovely read. I'm not sure what prompted such insight in your life right now, but it's great. I hope you are well and keep up the good writing!

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  3. I love your post (we must be related I love everything too). I have been thinking about choices lately as well. I read an excerpt from a book about George Washington. As a youth he had a temper he made a conscious choice to work on his temper, every morning and every evening he would review his goal and his progress. By the time he was al'growed up he was considered one of the most even-tempered of men. He didn't just drive to Wal-mart and purchase his even-temper he worked, hard and long, for it. I am working on my own life changing experiment, who knows how it will work but I enjoy following yours. Thank you!

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  4. @Christy - definitely, and that includes those choices that make me a better more pleasant mom. (even if that means that they may have to watch 2 episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba while I collect my thoughts- GASP!) ha ha. @Ashleigh - Who knows? I was just feeling like I needed an outlet. It has definitely been a fun project and I am so glad you are enjoying it. @Liz - I am slowly learning that there is NO such thing as a quick fix - it is always a journey. I doubt it takes most people 30 years to figure that out, but I am quite hard headed!

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