Just this week, we celebrated freedom here in the good old U.S. of A.
The freedom that I've been thinking about is not a freedom from the Declaration of Independence. It's not granted in the Constitution, either. It's a freedom that can't be taken away by any government or any outside force, and it's the only thing that allows us to use our other freedoms to their full capacities.
What is this freedom? Well, to paraphrase Viktor Frankl, the last human freedom is "to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."
This sounds like positive thinking fluff until you remember that Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor.
I looked through my journals from three, four years ago. I was facing tough challenges then, some even harder than what I face today. Yet in almost every entry, I praised God and said things like, "Things are going to work out!"
Today, a lot of my journal entries say things like, "Why aren't things working out? Why are things so hard?"
I know it sounds cheesy to say so, but attitude really does make a difference. I've been trying to build myself back up to the yappy-happy person I was when I started this blog.
It's just not working and it's so hard.
HA HA HA. Okay, I'm done. But also, because I'm curious to hear from all you people who I know read my blog but don't comment—what do you do when the going gets hard? How do you keep yourselves from getting discouraged?
For me, it's my perfectionism that gets me in trouble. My train of thought sounds something like "Oh no literally everyone that I know is married with sixteen perfect children and multiple degrees and I'm already 25 and I still don't know what I'm doing and life will never make sense ever because of reasons and oh no oh no oh no..."
ReplyDeleteI always have to remember that no two paths are identical, and that God can have a much bigger role in things than I typically acknowledge (or allow) Him to have.
I hear what you're saying. Kind of like this? http://awkwardmormongirl.blogspot.com/2014/11/i-hope-that-something-better-comes-along.html?m=0
DeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts! It really is a shame that neither of us is married with the obligatory sixteen perfect children. But you're right, not everyone's path is the same.
Like that, yeah, just applied to life in general. Life has its 'thou must's and its checkpoints, but it's amazing how much variety there is within those boundaries.
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