Yesturday was twelve years since my life changed forever. Twelve years since God was able to get ahold of my heart. Twelve years since God saved me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Twelve years ago yesturday I got into a bad car accident that set the course for me surrendering to God and Him performing a complete change on the inside of me.

It seems just like yesterday but yet it seems like a life time ago at the same time. And even though it has been one of the hardest roads that I have had to walk physically, it has been the greatest thing that could have happened to me spiritually, and I would not change any of it. I was made to stay still and be shut off from the world so that God could do the work in me that He needed to do. If you have read my testimony then you know what all took place and what all God did for me. I want to share with you one of the lessons that I have learned for todays post because I think that it is something that many people struggle with.

Wherever we are at in life at the moment is totally our fault. Rather we are in a good place or a bad place, it is no one else’s fault but our own. We have made the choices and decisions that has got us to where we are at. We may have made choices without the wisdom that we needed to make a better choice, therefore making wrong choices out of ignorance. We may have went through something bad that gave us reasons as to why we made certain choices. We may have even made choices for the purpose of protecting ourselves. But no one has made us unwillingly take the actions that have us where we are at in life. We have to take full responsibility for our own actions and outcomes of those actions. And that can be a hard thing to do when we are in a bad place in life.

My past and the people that did horrible things to me was my excuse for all the wrong choices that I made that had my life as messed up as it was. It was everyone else’s fault as to why I did all the wrong things that I did. If this wouldn’t have happened then i wouldn’t have done this. Or if that person wouldn’t have done this then i wouldn’t have done that. The blame game is something that I was a master player at. But it got me nowhere in life. It also kept me stuck in life. Because I was holding onto my past I wasn’t able to move forward.

Many of us have endured some pretty bad things in life. Some have been bullied, some have been violated. Some have been taken advantage of, some have been used. Some have been abused mentally, physically, and/or emotionally. Some have grown up not knowing what a peaceful home felt like. Some have grown up never feeling truly loved by anyone. Some have faced many losses and some have gotten lost. The trauma that one has suffered may be different but the result of the trauma is almost always the same. It causes us to put up walls and shut our hearts off from others. It causes us to treat others bad and often times we end up unintentionally dishing out the same pain that we have to others.

But I think that the biggest tragedy is that our past traumas cause us to treat ourselves bad. We get wrong beliefs about ourselves ingrained in our mind that cause us to not believe that we deserve better than what we are allowing ourselves to have in life. We form the belief that if we keep ourselves at a distance from others and do not allow them to get too close to us that we can keep ourselves from being hurt. We can even believe that it is everyone else’s fault that we have the type of life that we have. We can take the lie that the enemy has put in our head as truth that we are damaged goods or too broken to have the life that we desire.

Just because we have made wrong choices and decisions that has us at the place in life that we are at, that does not mean that we can’t turn things around. We have to first take full responsibility for our actions or lack of actions that has gotten us to where we are at. Then we have to forgive ourselves just as Jesus has forgiven us. The choices that you have made may have really someone or hurt you but that does not mean that you can’t truly be sorry for them and let the offense go so that you can focus on doing better. Just because we had a bad past does not mean that we have to have a bad present or future. And we prove to ourselves and to others that we are a different person than we used to be by showing it through our better actions.

No matter where we come from we have choices to make that can take us to a completely different side of the tracks. Our past does not have to dictate our future. Not everyone is like that person that did you wrong and hurt you so bad. Not every situation is going to turn out like those few situations did. We can not change what has happened but we can change the way that it is having an effect on us. And we can not erase our story but we can add some good chapters and an amazing end to our book of life.

We have to forgive ourselves and others for the things that happened in our past. We can not carry the pain or anger with us into a better future. We can never expect to move on from it until we let go of it. And we can find a way to use our pain for gain. We can help others because we have went threw what they are experiencing. We can teach others to do different. We can trust that God will turn our pain into a gain for us if we work with Him on healing the wounds. I have seen it happen in my own life so I know that it is possible.