If I could go back and do it all again...

Well, simply put, I wouldn't.

Living in the here and now, enjoying the life that I have now, being thankful for His mercies which are new every single day means there is peace and contentment. There is a complete lack of anxiety or fear. I don't have to spend a single second of my day trying to figure out all the angles and plan and scheme my future away.

I remember being 19 - 23. They were some of the darkest, most feaful days of my life. I thought I knew better. I thought there was a better life "somewhere out there" away from the accountability and away from the support that had been offered to me through my family and my extended family. I allowed myself to look to other PEOPLE as my standard and was somehow shocked and disappointed when they failed to measure up to my expectations at times. I grew weary in walking in love towards other people. I grew tired of "having people poking their nose into my business all the time" because I wasn't able to see that they were holding a mirror up to my face and asking me to take a look at what I was becoming. I didn't understand it came from a place of caring about me and for me and wanting to see me succeed in everything that was GOOD for me.

It breaks my heart to see others struggling with the same things. And it's not just the younger crowd. I see people my age and older going through the same testing that I went through all those years ago. And, I want to say to each of them...it will not be worth it in the end should you choose to turn your back on the things that you know to be true. Even if you were to argue that you are unsure of the truth or you don't agree that it's the truth, time will show. And the world is a harsh teacher and even crueler master.

Count the cost before you put on those rose colored glasses and abandon everything you have known up to this point. If there is a lack of peace, it's not from above.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Crossroads

I would like to make a case against the old saying, "Hindsight is 20/20" because if that was true, I can think of a handful of things I would have done differently along the way by being able to quickly go back and reverse a decision I made.

I think if the statement is true, it's only true years after the event has passed. Only at the point when you can lay hurt feelings aside, be completely honest with yourself about what caused you to act the way you did about things, and stop questioning what caused the other party's actions to play out the way things did can you truly say that hindsight is 20/20. Otherwise, looking back is being filtered. And usually the filter is already tainted with too many other feelings, emotions, or speculations which makes anything you might take away from the experience invalid.

Directly after the event occurs, the emotions can range from relief to anger to pain to guilt. Maybe you think it was for the best. Maybe you think it's the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Maybe you're too afraid to feel anything about it all so you box it up and put it away on a high shelf where you won't think to look at it again for awhile. Maybe you obsess over every little detail, looking for answers and trying to fit all the puzzle pieces together. Maybe your pride kicks in and you refuse to acknowledge what YOU did that caused things to unravel or come together in such ways.

Then, a few weeks go by. You find that you are no longer remembering every little detail. Maybe you can go through most of the day before something causes you to remember. Maybe you have removed everything or everyone that would make you remember so it's like it never even happened.

Then, a few months or a year goes by. Maybe something triggers a memory like a song or a scent or a taste. And instead of feeling the same way, you feel almost the opposite. Pain is replaced with warmth. Happiness / joy is replaced with regret. Anger replaced with love. Pride replaced with humbleness. Relief replaced with sadness. And instead of shoving everything aside, you find yourself beginning to make peace with each piece as you break it down and look at it section by section. As you resolve one piece, you put it away, most likely to never see it again.

And then, what you have left at the end of the process is either complete resolution of understanding exactly what happened and why. Or, you are left with a few things that don't quite make sense. They haven't exactly been resolved. You're still not sure what happened or why it happened or who initiated the event. And you can't move forward or put it away never to look at again because it still doesn't make any sense.

It's then, only here at this point, can hindsight be 20/20. Only here can you truly say "This is what I should have done," "This is how I wish I had handled things," "Had I done this instead, this is where my life would have taken a different path or direction." The unfortunate thing about reaching this point, most of the time, is that what was once a crossroads has now become an intricate web and if you were to pull on that one loose string, everything you have done since that event would become unraveled in the process.

What this means for someone like me is that instead of having everything in my life neatly resolved and put away, there will have to be things that never receive the level of closure that I would prefer. Instead of getting to go back and get to the bottom of exactly what happened and what I could have, should have, might have, wished I had done...I have to accept that the past is behind me. Whatever lies back there in one way or another has led me to where I am today. And the love, forgiveness, and mercy extended to my life in spite of some very bad decisions are not to be taken for granted.

And the second chances to make things right are not to be squandered by being selfish and only thinking about myself. It's the chance to resolve and grow and be refined. If the chance is misused, it will end up being another crossroads leading to hindsight causing me to wish I had made a better decision when the event was occuring.

I hate repeating things I should have done better/known better in the first place.