You are not your circumstances

I believed that for over 41 years, especially my younger years. My sense of security and belonging disappeared when I was seven and my parents divorced. Lots of you out there can relate, I am sure. Maybe you felt some of the same. Some of you may never know what it is like to spend every weekend at the cusodial parent's home, then the next at the non-custodial parent's home, with slight variations with or without your sibling. In the seven years in elementary school (Kindergarten through 6th grade), I went to five different schools. Only once I got to 5th grade, did I spend more than two years with the same classmates as we went through junior high and high school together. By then, some damage had been done. I see kids every day that come into my office that feel like they have no where to go, nothing to look foward to because of the life they have had so far. I thought about one young man in particular this morning on my run and saw no hope in his eyes the last time he left my office. I so wanted to tell him to not give up and that he is more than his circumstances. But I can't. This is my daily struggle...feeling like a bud that wants to bloom but is being held back by restraints that I had no control of putting there to begin with anyway. I am not my circumstances and neither are you. Whether that means you are in a love-less marriage, a kid looking for someone to be there for them, or sitting in a job you dread going to everyday. When you find the strength and courage to break out of your circumstances and be who you are then you become free. You can do anything...the environment you are in at the time is only temporary, but what you do with those lessons will change you forever. I am different from who I was two years ago, but I am not even sure I could explain it or nor would I ever want to go back there. Be brave and change your circumstances if it makes you unhappy. That is not who you are...you KNOW who that is. Be free.