Make Good Choices

I don't remember much from my middle school days besides nasty girls, curly hair, and passing out. However, I do remember my middle school principal ending each morning announcement with the sentence, "Have a great day and remember to make good choices!"  Oh, how we would make fun of him for that. "Make good choices!" was a joke we would tell each other when we were clearly *not* about to make a good choice.  Look at me a few decades later still remembering the words he instilled in us. I can't tell you his name, but I can tell you that his message is still with me and it means a great deal to me now in my 30s than it did when I was half my age.
I have made plenty of terrible mistakes in my life. I can think of a few hair choices that were a disaster!  That doesn't stop me from trying to make good choices in the future. I love that each day is another chance to better the world!  I tend to self-talk and boost myself up and I have started to reuse those old words. I tell myself to "make good choices!" The number one thing I work on is my relationship with my family.  Sometimes anxiety and depression can get in the way, but if I work on individual choices, I can overcome anything with God guiding me.

I find myself repeating his words to my own children. I ask them to think about their choices before they make them. "Make good choices," has started to be my own catch phrase to my kids at the start of our day. Just like I did at age 15, I doubt these words are helping them this moment. Perhaps in 15 years they will look back on our time and my words and they will see it differently. Perhaps they will make one good choice because of my words. Perhaps they will laugh at me. It doesn't matter.

These choices are what make us who we are. So do I want to be an impatient, angry, cranky mother?  Do I want to be a nagging, unforgiving wife?  Do I want to be a forgetful and unloving human?  The choices I make will define me.  "It's our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." J.K. Rowling

I choose to be patient with my children.
I choose to love my husband.
I choose to hold God above anything and everything else.

Do I always follow through?  Of course not, but each day comes with new moments to choose.  I want to be positive with them and I feel these words are a great way to show that at the start of a new day!