The choices that you make in this lifetime can define you.

Life is about choices. It is always about choices. How you respond to those choices, show the type of person that you are or who you want to ultimately become. Let me give you an example of something that happened to me and how I chose to handle it.

Recently, I was driving in Baton Rouge traffic to get to my job working with adults with disabilities. There was a woman who was swerving in and out of the lanes carelessly and she cut closely in front of me. I honked my horn one time to let her know that she needed to be careful. I realized that this was someone that I wanted to get away from, so I moved to the next lane, but she swerved to get in front of me. Every time that I tried to get away from her, she swerved to cut me off. I didn’t honk again and I decided it wasn’t worth it, so I slowed down and decided I was just going to wait her out by hanging back. She then got off at an exit and preceded to flip me off. I knew then that I had a choice. I could respond in kind or I could ignore the gesture. I think that I made an even harder choice because I chose to pray for her instead. She was very clearly an angry woman and it just made me feel that by asking God to help her, I could also heal my anger at her unjust actions against me.

Praying for that person at that time was not the easiest choice, believe me! I don’t feel more self-righteous than others because of choosing to pray about it. I just found that I needed to bring God into a situation that could have turned deadly. By bringing God into that circumstance that I was in, I found that it made me feel better rather than bitter, overall.

I know that many of us today are faced with all sorts of situations or people that cause us to just fume and want to blow our tops. My suggestion is…. don’t. Try another way. It never hurts and has all of the power to help and heal. We need that most in this world today.

What did I learn from this? Give everything over to God and I do mean EVERYTHING! It sure did help to bring my blood pressure down! I know that I can’t control what others do but I can control MY response. And guess what….. prayers are free! If I want to find joy within myself then that is the way that I can share joy, even if she didn’t know it at that time. My hope is that one day, she will be able to let go of her anger.

What can you gain from this? Ask yourself this question….Did I feel better after responding in kind? Most likely, the answer to that is….no, you really didn’t. Everyone needs to stand up to people who choose to bully, but also know that there is another way on how we can respond to negativity. I dare you to also give prayer a try, too. What do you have to lose?