In your story of life do you view yourself as the author, the editor, co-author, the main character or the reader or something else altogether? Often I have viewed my life book as if I am the main character but have no control over the story, the characters I am surrounded by, the plot or the scene. I have viewed myself as a passive participant just accepting and dealing with what life throws at me. Does this sound familiar to you? When I was very young a dear family member introduced me to the concept of lucid dreaming. I was having some bad dreams at night and he said you know you can control your dreams…WHAT?!?! He was right. As a 5 year old I took over my dreams. The key was realizing you were dreaming and in control of what you wanted to do. One recurring dream I had was this twisting sinkhole that would suck you into the ground. As soon as that thing showed up I asked myself “am I dreaming?” As soon as I answered that with a
“yes” I told myself that I am taking over. I realized I could do one of two things. I could do whatever I wanted to do or wake myself up. Often I would just wake myself up but sometimes I would decide to fly or fight back or change the narrative. It was pretty amazing stuff for a five year old. Working through some self awareness exercises and focusing on some key Scriptures many years ago reminded me that God is sovereign and is “working all things together for good,” according to His script, His story…..but I was also reminded that I have a responsibility and expectation to choose my response to what life throws at me. Some have suggested that life is 20% of what happens to you and 80% of how you respond to it. If there is one thing I can control it is my response, my attitude and my thoughts. God holds us responsible for these things, therefore I am led to believe that I can control these things. The problem of course is it takes away my excuses to keep blaming life and others. We may use expressions like “There is nothing I can do” or “That’s just the way I am.” Or we may spiritualize it a little more than that and even blame God indirectly. Steven Covey said “it is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happened to us in the first place.” More importantly than what Covey says is what the Lord says in Joshua 24:15 “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.” There are some choices we can make day by day and moment by moment. Focus on the things that you can control. You can control your responses emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally. No, you cannot control everything around you, people, the market, business, COVID-19, and so on, but you can control “you” with the power of the Holy Spirit and in obedience to God’s commands to take responsibility. You see the reality is that you are more than the main character of your story, you are the co-author with God writing your script. The great thing about being one of the writers to a story is you can change your script. Your story is not completely written or published. You may not be able to go back and change the previous chapters but you can begin to write a plot with a twist simply by taking responsibility, remembering you have the ability to control your response. So go write the rest of your story!
