I Believe

Another blog post idea I found was to write about ten things that you believe. Working on this post over the past week or so has really made me pause and think about just that. There are hundreds of things I could say I believe in: that the grass is green or that chocolate is a God-given gift, but are those truly the ten most important things that I want to talk about? Not really. Through writing this post, I've learned more about what my priorities in life are.

I believe that we are all children of God.

God created each and every one of us individually. Tall, short, big, small, blue eyes, brown eyes, red hair, blonde. We're all our own separate person with our own strengths and weaknesses, desires, hopes, and quirks. God made us that way on purpose, and no two people are exactly alike.

I believe in love.
Love is eternal, because it comes from God. His love is without end, because HE is without end. Every day we have opportunities to show that love to those around us, in small or huge ways. Everyone on this planet looks for that person who they want to spend the rest of forever with, and that desire is God-given. We are "programmed" to love others, romantically or otherwise.

I believe in respect.
When I worked at McDonald's for nine months, I was extremely surprised and hurt by how rudely I was treated by customers on a daily basis. They assumed that because I was working in the fast food industry, I must be a complete idiot with no future. It was very hard for me to continue seeing myself as a decent human being when I was constantly being treated like garbage. 

Respect is so so powerful. Just treating someone with kindness, patience, or an understanding attitude can make a world of difference. When we treat others the way we want to be treated (which is HOPEFULLY with respect), we are helping to make the world just a teeny tiny bit better. Respect should not have to be earned, it should be given freely until someone proves that they do not deserve it. And even then, we should still try our best to treat that person kindly. 

I believe that we are each responsible for our own destiny.

Our lives will be what we decide. No matter our circumstances, our attitude towards our struggles or times of success will be what make us who we are. It doesn't matter if we graduated at the top of our class or became the president, or if we dropped out of high school and worked at McDonald's our entire earthly existence. There are some people who have it all, and still seem SO unhappy with their lives. And there are others who have practically nothing and are the happiest people in the world. We make our own destiny because destiny is not what happens to us, but what we do with our circumstances.

I believe in the power of service.

Whether we're rescuing a kitten from a tree, helping an old lady cross the street, or simply smiling at a stranger we walk by, service is powerful. Not only for those we help, but for ourselves. When I'm having a bad day or upset about something, doing an act of kindness for someone else immediately replaces that devastating emotion with joy. SERVE OTHERS! 

I believe in the importance of capturing and preserving memories.

Anyone that knows me well knows how obsessed I am with taking photos and scrapbooking them. But what some people probably don't know is that I also keep a journal, which I write in daily. I'm also heavily involved in family history work (genealogy). In our lifetime, keeping record of daily occurrences has become 1000x easier because of the internet and specifically social media. It makes me smile when I think about how 20-30 years from now, if I want my kids to know what I was really like, I can just find my Facebook or Instagram page and show them. They'll be able to get a real idea of what I was like at their age, instead of just looking at pictures or hearing stories secondhand from another relative or even from me. They'll get the 100% truth of what was going on inside my head when I was seventeen, or thirteen, or whatever. They could really know me, as a real person; not just "Mom", if they wanted to. 

While social media is incredible, I also believe that keeping a journal is extremely important. I love being able to go back and read over things that upset me or made me happy as far back as middle school, and laugh at how ridiculous, or sometimes astonishingly intuitive, I was at that age. We forget the little day to day occurrences and take them for granted, and when we can look back on what we've been through it gives us more of an appreciation for the lives we've created for ourselves.

I believe in forgiveness.

I'm only 22 years old and I'm sure the words "I'm sorry" have escaped my lips more than a million times. I can only imagine how many more times throughout my life I will have to utter those same words. And I have heard them hundreds of times from other people--family, friends, coworkers, etc. 

Forgiveness is a very difficult thing, and it is especially difficult when we have to forgive someone who has not asked us to, due to their belief that they were in the right, being completely unaware of making an offense, or several other reasons. Forgiveness requires humility, selflessness, and patience. But without forgiveness our lives would be very one-dimensional and somewhat pointless. At some point in my life, I have had to forgive the people I love most, usually multiple times. Without that forgiveness I would not be able to move on and continue loving them and making memories with them. Without forgiveness, the people we love would be constantly replaced by new people until THEY did something offensive, and so on. We would never develop life-long relationships with people, or grow to know them on a deeper level as the years progressed. Forgiveness is essential.

I believe in learning.

Coming from a future teacher, this is probably not surprising at all. But I believe in the importance of constantly learning new things and improving our talents, whether that's a sport, new cooking recipes, or working towards our desired profession. Our minds are not meant to stop growing once we hit a certain age! God designed us in such a way that we should always be changing and growing, learning from our mistakes and gaining more knowledge. What we learn in this life is one of the few things we'll be able to take with us after death, so we should gain as much knowledge as we can. 

I believe in cultivating a positive self-image.

Every woman, no matter what she looks like, is beautiful. Tall, short, curvy, skinny, you name it. Every woman is beautiful no matter what her size, even though the media tells us otherwise. Body positivity is something every woman (and some men) struggle with; it's a serious problem in our current society. Negative self-image can lead to depression, eating disorders, and other psychological or physical problems. We need to work on seeing ourselves as the amazing people that we really are!

I believe in creativity.

As an extremely crafty person, I LOVE creating things. I think it's important to do something creative every day. That could be scrapbooking, or painting, or just doodling on your notebook page during a lecture in class. We all have the power to create things on a daily basis and we should take advantage of it.


What do you believe?