Labels

I’m a big fan of Criminal Minds and my favorite scene of the entire series is in Season 6 Episode 2 called “JJ.” It’s when we say goodbye to JJ and the episode ends with a monologue of her saying this,

“I’m thankful for my years spent with this family, for everything we shared, every chance we had to grow. I’ll take the best of them with me and lead by their example wherever I go. A friend told me to be honest with you, so here it goes. This isn’t what I want, but I’ll take the high road. Maybe it’s because I look at everything as a lesson, or because I don’t want to walk around angry, or maybe it’s because I finally understand. There are things we don’t want to happen, but have to accept. Things we don’t want to know, but have to learn. And people we can’t live without, but have to let go.”

I have this quote up on my wall because it is a mindset that I try to keep. Being someone with faith, or even without, I feel like we as a society have the mindset that we deserve an easy life or a life without trials especially if we’re being “good” people and doing everything we’re supposed to do. Sometimes I think this then discourages us and puts us in a mindset that if God isn’t giving us what we want right now even when we’re doing everything we’re supposed to we are going to go get what we want ourselves. This causes us to listen to our flesh more than to God.

But honestly, God didn’t promise us an easy life.

I know many good people who have dealt with some difficult battles. Some of those people handled it well and others did not. Take away whether or not they were believers of Christ and just focus on how they let those battles run their lives. The difference was whether or not they played the victim and let their battles define who they were.

People often ask me what stopped me from doing drugs and falling into a lot of the generational battles that I was born into. For one I watched them, more specifically my aunt, and didn’t want to go through what they did. Even with me watching and not wanting to do what they did, I did end up falling into some of their destructive decisions that gave them pain for decades of time. The difference between me and them is that I don’t plan to let it define me. When I made those bad decisions I did have the thought of “Oh, of course, this ended up happening because I was born into it and it’s what is expected to happen to me.” There is going to be some of that hence why those generational cycles are so hard to break but it is your mindset that is going to help you break those cycles.

I sat in a communication class the other day and we talked about how we are so defined by labels and how those labels affect how we do things. To be honest that is one of the hardest things about this generational cycle that I am fighting so hard to break. For so much of my life, I have been labeled. People would know me as the kid without a mom and that’s what defined me. Even people who are some of my closest friends are asked about me and my story and realize they don’t know much but the fact that I lost my mom. My entire life has been defined by labels and those labels are what I think holds people back. I know it does for me. It puts people in a closed mindset. They don’t think they can be anything else but what they are labeled.

It’s when I fall into the mindset of “This is what I was born into and this is what I deserve,” that the perfect situation is created for the enemy to wreak havoc not only over my life but those around me. Like JJ said in that Criminal Minds episode, this may not be ideal but I am not going to let it define the rest of my life. I am going to take the good and bad and use it to only grow into a better person.

I don’t plan on letting the decisions give me pain for the rest of my life as my family did. Will the pain from generational and personal decisions go away completely? No, but I do believe if I grow from the mistakes and not let them define me that the pain won’t be as painful. For example, I hope I am not crying in pain decades later like Aunt Debbie did from a decision she made and let control her her entire life. Ultimately, it will depend on my perspective and my relationship with God. God has already forgiven me for my past decisions so why can’t I forgive myself and move on? He doesn’t want all of the crap that has happened to define me so why am I letting it?