Girl, Don’t Carry Around Your Mistakes!

dec 13

I am in Belize for the week and am exceedingly grateful to Christine, one of our guest bloggers for helping me this week with our blog posts. Christine is an amazing writer and an even more amazing person. I hope you are able to glean some very valuable lessons from her posts today.

By Christine Saah:

“It’s what you do with the gift of life that defines who you are.”

I read this on twitter this morning and I could not help but think about the poor souls impacted by the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday. I don’t know many of the details, but children and adults faced death or injury. The participants couldn’t  have known that at the beginning of the 26.2 mile race they would face such tragedy. I can only hope that the participants were using their gift of life for good. I admire anyone who competes in such a race, and I am sure participants would be the perfect role models on how to push through tough times and be thankful for it all.

Marathon runners train hard. They have strength, endurance and passion. Training is a challenge, because it pushes you beyond your limits and what you are comfortable with. The challenge is a struggle, but so much good comes from it. You find self-confidence and strength you never knew you had. I think we can all take a similar mentality to our every day lives. We can look at recovery from a porn addiction or drug addiction as something we are training for. We want to eventually run the marathon and cross the finish line in victory. That cannot happen without building up your spirit’s strength. We become stronger each time we fight a temptation, even a small one. The more and more we resist urges, the more able we are to say no to larger temptations. We have to train by starting with small changes. No one can run a marathon after having trained for a week. It takes time. We can be extremely thankful by understanding the best way to run the race or recover. The pain we feel in the struggle to change means we are working towards a life free from chains. We all have our own struggles that may not sound as bad as an eating disorder or self-harm addiction, but they are struggles.

You can take small steps like saying a prayer to  Mary when you want to cut or pick up the bottle to drink. Even simpler. you can just say “JESUS.” If you can really do something small each day to challenge your self-destructive behavior, you will have the ability to be thankful. You’re not only sharing in the suffering of Christ’s death on a cross, but you are also a living testimony to others struggling. Having an addiction doesn’t mean your life is over. In fact, it gives you more of a reason to appreciate every moment of your day. God is filling you with so many graces especially as you turn to the cross to become the person He wants you to be.

In light of the sadness, we can all just continue to pray for Boston.

All the Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.

P.S. You are enough.

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