REAP YOUR DESTINY

Have you left your destiny up to fate? What is real? What is truly important? Are we really in charge of our destiny? Or is there a greater force at work?

This sounds more like a statement of youth than that of a woman turning sixty next month, doesn't it. However, I have really been reevaluating my life lately, wondering what I may have missed, failing to follow, because I prefer to lead. I find I am still wondering what it is that I am seeking to make me feel so in need of success.

As a child, I was very controlled by those around me, sometimes to the point that I was given no choice at all. As I grew up and moved out into the world on my own, I still felt the need to stay within that cocoon of control from the original sources, never quite releasing myself from the need to please them.

Once I became a parent myself, I became that controlling factor in someone else's life, sometimes too controlling, as I was taught by those before me.

And yet, I still had little control over my own life. It was always just easier to control others, taking care of them so that they walked the path before them without pitfalls. Now I realize many times the path they walked was really the path I set forth for them with my desires, my needs, and my choices for them.

Now that I am coming to a crossroads in my life where I have only me to control, I find I am not quite sure what to do with me!

It is now time to finally face myself and delve into an unknown territory. This territory lies within my own mind and it contains choices I have avoided all my life. Who am I without all the others who controlled me or gave me control over them?

And, most important, what would God have me do with my life in these later years? Have I missed the mark all along, never placing Him in charge in the first place? I think this may be exactly where my path veered off track years ago. I was so busy being controlled and controlling my own destiny that I missed what He had planned for me. I forgot to stop, sit quietly, and listen as He whispered His instructions in my ear.

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our lives are made. It comes silently, sometimes not even noticed, as choices are made daily by all of us. The day we are born, nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that we possess is the power to choose which impulse we decide to follow.

I had this great urge as a child. Some may have called it destiny. My parents and friends called it dismaying! But life often redirects, sometimes crushing, those natural urges of dreams born in each of us.

Our soul becomes dyed with the colors of our own thoughts and our surroundings. If we think only on those things that are in line with our principles, we can bear the light of day. If we waver from our principles, our steps toward success will waver as well.

The content of our character is our choice, as what we do daily becomes whom we become. Our integrity is our destiny and integrity should direct our steps. That integrity should be molded by choices made with God in control of the steering wheel for we are driven as an automobile is driven down a distant highway. It comes at full speed and must be guided properly or it falters.

If our lives are not guided by God’s map for each individual, faltering is inevitable.

“And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule…” Albert Einstein

These options, I knew from the beginning but it has taken sixty years for the reality of it to finally sink in. How strong-willed we humans are!

Yes, I am simply a philosopher in a sense. These are my opinions based on what I believe. This is my search for reality. I certainly don’t have the answers. It is my decision, whether or not, to follow God’s lead in my own journey through this short life we are afforded.

Therefore, what is your own philosophy? What are your opinions? What are they based on? And whom will you allow to lead you? Where will you find instruction to your own personal success? At what age will you begin to sculpt your own destiny toward true success? There is no age too early, nor too late.

Whatever you habitually think yourself to be, this is whom you are.

Our job, in this lifetime, is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out whom we already are and become it. If we are born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter. If we are born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother. If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice in the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business. We need to discover our innate abilities and use them always in the way God directs.

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

For me, I am finally sitting quietly and listening, awaiting His direction, relinquishing the reins of my life to someone who had the perfect plan from the beginning.

No matter your age right at this moment, this is the dawn of a new day. Put your future into good hands…God’s. Allow Him to light your way, guiding you toward a chosen destiny set forth toward His plan.