Lately I've referenced the wonderful but responsible concept of intentionality; facing situations or opportunities, implementing principles and strategies of recovery, on purpose. The older I get and more experienced I become in both life and recovery, the more it seems that almost every decision of importance necessitates having courage to see it through.

It's purely amazing to realize how much God has done for my family and I. Many times a week I thank God with incredible gratitude for what he has done. How he has saved my family. How he has preserved us from being another unfortunate divorce statistic, and unbeknownst to us, intervened at just the right time, for the betterment of all who were involved. For how he has redeemed Jodi and I, and continued adjusting both of us, as we face a recovered and restored life together. Those are just to name a few. Anyone who has looked at my life in depthly, would say God has given me, and us, so very much. Yet there is one thing I was reading about the other day, which was such a great revelation. He has given us the power and opportunity to decide. To choose. To make choices, and ultimately live by them. He has certainly given us the power to choose how we live, how we decide, and furthermore, how we endure. It's an amazing revelation to realize that we have God given power to decide, yet WE have to be the one's who do decide.

We have the power of choice, yet we have to be the ones who reap the fruit of our choices and consequences. If there is one thing that I have come to a great understanding of over the last 3 years of recovery, it's consequences. Anyone who has had an affair, then been exposed or came clean, and endeavors to live out the consequences of those choices, will echo my heartfelt sentiments.

We, the betrayer, have a choice as to whether or not we come clean. Whether or not we share EVERY THING, EVERY AFFAIR, EVERY ADDICTION, EVERY DETAIL, or just a few minor things. WE have to make the decision to share, and then by that choice, we then empower our spouse to have the chance to make the decision to quite possibly give us one of the greatest gifts another human being could give: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

From where we spend eternity, to how we raise our kids, to what we watch on TV and our computers, to where we invest and give our hard earned money. We have the right to decide.

God can do everything for us, but DECIDE. He's provided the power. He's provided His Grace. He's provided the Word of God to believe in, stand on, and utilize in prayer for our families and marriages. Yet in His amazing character and most of all love, He refuses to stuff His decisions and His will for us, down our throats. Somewhere, sometime, we each have to make the decision to respond to His word, His nature, His prompting, and His fork in the road.

Take for example, a chunk of scripture, all about choice, in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy chapter 30:15....

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendents, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying his voice, and by holding fast to him.

Wow! Now that's heavy.

The entire context of the scriptures center around how we choose. It inherently assumes we will in fact, make some choice. Which brings me to a point of great accountability and revelation: MY CHOICES HAVE PUT ME HERE. And only MY CHOICES will get me through here, and on to where, and more specifically who, He wants me to be; for the rest of my entire life. Don't get me wrong, there is always the grace of God to be held on to, and the redemption of God to cry out for. I don't want to at any level minimize the reality of forgiveness and healing in Christ. But rest assured, God will not override our will, our choices, or our rebellion. I chose to have the affair, and I chose to allow the situation to become what it was. Sure it was a trap and sure there were circumstances that were terribly unfair and ridiculous, and even to this day, hundreds of people have no idea of the truth of what really happened and what emphatically didn't happen. Again though, may I shout from the words of this blog, I made choices that put me there, and here.

Know this, our decisions determine our destiny.

WHAT IS GOD SAYING TO YOU TODAY? I pray today, that you come to the awesome and insightful revelation that we have power to choose. It's an amazing gift. One of His finest in fact. But right in the middle of the awesomeness of choice, rears the ugly head of accountability. It would be great if we did not have to be accountable to our choices and we could live in some sort of post modernistic bliss that entailed living free from any and all responsibility. That everyone's truth was their own truth. Try telling a hurt spouse that YOUR TRUTH, was to have an affair and that's all there is to it. We simply cannot sustain such a mentality as it will catch up with us in ways I really don't wish on anyone. Wherever you are today, know that you do in fact, have power. You have the power to choose. Perhaps it's been clouded through your addiction or continuous acting out. Perhaps you feel as though the power of choice has been stripped from you by marital turmoil. But whether you are the hurt spouse, or the hurtful spouse, choice is always involved. Your choices can and most certainly will affect you, your spouse, and your children, possibly for the rest of their lives. For you to be in the mental and emotional situations you are in right now, you (like I) have most definitely made choices. I pray both you, and myself, choose life, and at that, life in Christ. The quote below is a great impetus into greater revelation of the power of choosing one's own way.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.....Viktor Frankl

WE'RE HERE FOR YOU, AND WE'RE PRAYING FOR YOU!!!