Note to Self: Choices

If I were to have written a letter to myself today, it would look like this:

Life is full of choices, dear one. I am not just talking about the choice you give your daughter each morning of cereal or oatmeal for breakfast. Not the kind you make at a restaurant between a hamburger or chicken strips. Not even the kind of choices you make when buying a house. You, Larissa, are constantly making choices with your emotions.

In the last 24 hours, your eight month-old has vomited peas and pears all down your torso, his, and onto the floor (though not before hitting your thigh and foot on the way down). The dog has also thrown up and pooped on the floor. Your 23 month-old has a diaper rash for the record books because she too has a touch of this stomach bug that is manifesting itself in lots of dirty *cloth* diapers. She screams every time she sits, and drops to the floor in pain every time she tries to walk.

What will you choose, Larissa?

Your husband texts saying that again this week, his employer and he had mixed up his work schedule, and he is now working 12 hours tomorrow.

What will you choose, Larissa?

The clerk in the grocery store is into her second day on the job and has not received enough training to do this on her own, causing you to wait an extra 15 minutes while she finds the code for the salad bar. Then there is no one to bag your items, so you are managing three separate orders, an antsy two year-old, and the $110 in groceries yourself.

What will you choose, Larissa?

You hear your husband state that while you are at said grocery store, he plans on beating a video game when all you can see is the pile of laundry on the couch, the sink full of dishes, the menagerie of toys scattered across...everywhere, and the list of phone calls that have yet to be made.

And what will you choose then, Larissa?

Oh, Larissa. Do you not realize that in each of these moments, you have the choice to respond in a way that encourages life or a way that breeds death? And lest you think that just because you say nothing or you put on a happy face while all the while thinking damaging thoughts you are not choosing death, let me share a secret: you are. You are choosing death over life-giving thoughts. And death leads to more death.

The choice is yours.

You can clean up the messes, praising the Lord that your husband was there to help, while sweetly whispering "It's going to be alright" to your baby boy. Or you can choose to do the opposite.

You can thank the Lord for the hours and pay at a job your husband enjoys doing, trust that He has just the right patient for Nathanael to minister to tomorrow, and appreciate your husband's desire to provide for your family, even if it means a lack of sleep. Or you can choose the way of death.

You can look at the line in Dillon's as an opportunity to exercise patience today, realize that you may be the only patient person this poor girl gets all day, and do everything you can to reassure her that you are in no rush. Or you can stamp your foot and spread that death all over her too.

You can kindly ask your husband to put the laundry away and carry the items downstairs if he gets the chance while you are gone. Or you can simmer in death the entire time you are away only to lead to a full boil the moment you return.

Do you see, sweet Larissa, how powerful these choices are for your own life and the lives around you?

"I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants." -Deuteronomy 30:19

And just in case you have forgotten how to choose life: "by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days."


This is it, Larissa Marie. Choose life.