Clouds Collect and Disperse Moisture and Trees Lie Where They Fall

Well here we are, 2021, and I’m excited to have this new label so there can be a fresh, new perspective on this thing we call life. I’m grateful that you have taken the time to consider my perspective on life. I hope that you will think about what I share in this post and my future entries; forgetting anything that has no value and incorporating anything that resonates in your spirit. Don’t forget to leave a comment or 2.

Many people I talk to are trying to recover from 2020. The clever, yet profound meme I saw recently said “This year will be the first time that hindsight will actually be 2020.” I want to challenge you and say that hindsight will not be true and clear if you have the mentality that you are a victim. These well-meaning men and women, even Christians, have this overwhelming victim mentality about 2020. For nearly 9 months they have wallowed in the effects of this global pandemic. They have constantly lamented every part of quarantine. They have continually mourned every change and loss of 1^st world freedoms. They have fought over their rights to do what they want to do and not be told otherwise. Without even realizing it, they have appeared selfish, self-seeking, sometimes lost. Might I say, they have not been the “light” they have been called to be. We are all hoping to recover from the pandemic, but that recovery period has not arrived yet.

For me, 2020 has been a year of recovery. Like each of you, I have been on a path of processing all that COVID-19 has brought. I have learned that we are not all in the same boat, but in the same ocean. But unlike some of you, I have had the opportunity to use 2020 to recover from being a victim of my own choices in life. Rather than letting 2020 be defined as one of the most negative years of my 53 years of life, 2020 is already defined as one of the best years of my life. Very little hindsight is needed for me to realize this. For the first time in forever, I have cemented myself in the ideal that I am NOT a victim.

If you are like me, you could easily look at your place in life and resent where you are, blaming it on anything and anyone but yourself. You may identify that your unhappiness was a result of someone else’s actions, lack of actions, or something completely intangible. As I looked at my life, this truth became evident; my own choices brought me to the lowest point. Any bit of unhappiness was of my own doing. Any bit of fear and anxiety was rooted in my own actions or reactions. Any bit of loneliness resulted from the steps I took on my journey.

Years ago my dad told me that if I “wait for the perfect time, that time will never come.” How we get to that time where we have the courage to take action may be different for each of us. That time for me was 2020. Ecc. 11:3-6 tells us that what we take in and store we will release. As a victim, I was storing and releasing toxic rain; not always, not everywhere, but far too often. 2020 offered me the opportunity to decidedly change what I was filling myself with and thus changing what I was giving back to the world around me.

Verse 3 goes on to tell us that where we are in this life is where we have fallen in this life. Some of us have caused ourselves to lie in the wrong place because we have been cutting and chipping away at the wrong parts of ourselves. But we cannot blame anyone but ourselves. If we just watch, with a victim mentality, what is happening in our lives, we will never become who we desire to become or who we were created to be. Verse 4 is really what my dad was saying all those years ago.

Recovering from being a victim takes action. The author of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a season for lament (Ecc. 3:4). But it is only a season. Some of you refuse to decide that it is now the season for healing, for building, for dancing, for recovering from being a victim. Would you make 2021 the year that you actively decided that while you feel like the victim and life seems out of control, God has the power to restore you? Would you make 2021 the year to allow Christ to fill you? Would you allow Him to chip away at the parts of you that need removing and set you toward a direction of healing? Just as the author of Ecclesiastes tells us, I have experienced the profit, the reward, the gifts of recovering from being a victim of my own actions.

Happy New Year!