Choosing a Better Ending

Did you ever read those "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" when you were a kid, where you could take on the role of the protagonist and make choices that would determine the main character's actions and eventually decide the conclusion of the exciting tale?  One of the reasons I love writing so much is that I can choose amazing endings for all of my own character's stories.  It's like my own "Choose Your Own Adventure Book" where I can follow my character's development all the way to the story's satisfying end.  It's too bad that I sometimes forget that I am also living my own, "Choose Your Own Adventure" story and I can also direct and redirect my own life's experiences.  In the midst of a particularly bad week, I read this amazing quote.  "At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end."  

How glad I was to internalize these words.  This last week has certainly brought many challenges that I would definitely like to free myself from.  Sometimes life gets hard and we get mired down in the toughness of it and forget that ultimately we have the power to look for a better solution in living our own life story.  All of us experience hardships and disappointments along life's journey.  But even if we are bogged down in a lot of crud and muck we can change life into something beautiful. 

A few years back I had the amazing opportunity of visiting Switzerland and hiking in the gorgeous Swiss Alps.  As my husband and I were hiking along at the base of the Matterhorn one afternoon, I came across a curious sight.  The mountainside was dotted with the occasional goat pie from those wonderful, happy, hairy, bell-clad, Swiss goats, but right in the middle of the trail was a splendid dried specimen that was crowned with stunning purple flowers.  The fact that something so beautiful could arise from something so dire was frankly inspiring to me, and so I took a picture.  Those little flowers taught me a lesson:  even if you are surrounded by crap, you can still turn your face toward the sunshine and become something noteworthy.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

  

No matter where we are on the road of life or what kind of muck lies in our way we can change our direction.  I'm ready to be done with the "nonsense" of this week and choose a different adventure, one with a much better outcome, one with an inspiring view at the end of the story.  I hope we can all remember that it's never too late to choose a better ending!  

In the words of Jeffrey R. Holland, "Don’t give up. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”