The Power of Choice

Before you read any further, I want you to stop, walk to a mirror, meet your own eyes, and….notice. What thoughts pop into your head? What familiar words and phrases do you hear? When you walk away, how are you feeling inside – in your body, in your mind, in your heart, in your gut?

I have the great good fortune to work with middle and high school girls through a weekly school day program. The program curriculum emphasizes the power we each have to make good choices and in this way take control of our future. Many of the girls I meet each week come from low-income, single-parent or broken home families. And as I have gotten to know some of them better over the length of our sessions, I have learned that several in each class have also come way too close in their young lives to drama, and trauma, that the rest of us only watch as ‘entertainment’ on network tv.

Does this make them blasé? Sometimes. They can view events like having a gun held to their head as just a part of every day life – something I for one certainly can’t do. One young woman recently confided that she and her friends carry their handguns with them wherever they go – ‘just in case’. She laughed when I asked her if she had her conceal-and-carry license. ‘No’, she replied (while giggling softly and shaking her head as if I was totally out of touch with reality), ‘I just carry.’

Does this ‘early exposure’ make them wise? Surprisingly – sometimes. Today two young friends were in their usual places, camped out around my desk while we did our weekly crafts project. They were trading soft ‘barbs of love’, as I call them, for lack of the proper street vernacular to describe their exchange. One girl said something about a friend of hers who thinks she’s ugly. The other girl replied, ‘I don’t understand people who say they’re ugly. If someone says I’m ugly, I tell them to go away! I’m not ugly – and if they think I am then they are wasting my time!’

All this from a 15-year old. When I, shocked and amazed, turned in her direction and congratulated her on her surprisingly self-loving perspective, and asked her who taught her to think like that, she answered, ‘My momma. Every day my momma would yell at me that I was ugly, that I was never gonna be anybody or do anything good in this world when I grew up – just like her. I decided I would never let anyone talk to me like that again, and if they did, I wouldn’t listen. That’s why I’m in Child Protective Services now. I know I am beautiful and no one can tell me otherwise.’

This young lady had taken control of her future. I knew it wasn’t her abusive biological parents who had called CPS – she had taken matters into her own hands to get herself to safety. As we talked further I learned that she and her brother now live side-by-side in secure housing, far away from those who would hurt them further. And when, later that afternoon, another beautiful young teen girl approached me and confided that she was being abused by a family member and needed help NOW, I realized that the power of choice was already in action all around me. It awed me to witness these young women, whether they realized it or not, or felt ready for it or not, willingly stepping up to the plate to take responsibility for the quality of their own lives through the decisions they were making each and every day.

We can – and must – do the same. In fact, recognizing, accepting and harnessing the power of choice in our own lives is really the only thing on our priority, or ‘to-do’, list. Without the awareness, willingness and action of making our own choices, where can we go that is different than where we have been that we would not go back to, or where we find ourselves now that we do not want to be? The power of choice is everything. It is life. It is freedom. It is redemption, reconciliation, and transformation. And it is our 100% responsibility and right – if we don’t use it, and use it to our good, then who will? Who can?

Step up to the plate with me, and when the ball of choice comes flying our way, we will swing our bats with confidence and use all the wisdom, life experience, and good intentions we have at our disposal to direct the ball towards the sunlight of hope, recovery, and life. Imagine a thousand hands, all gripping the same bat with the same degree of determination. Imagine ten thousand of us, sitting around a table, all acknowledging that we are beautiful and will listen to nothing less than that from those we choose to let into our lives. Imagine one hundred thousand of us, marching on all that ails us and overcoming.

Shannon

If you would like to submit a question or idea for a topic you would like to see addressed in a future edition, please send it to Shannon c/o Good News HERE