As people, we're often exceedingly judgmental. We love leaders because that gives us someone to point the finger at if something fails or falls apart. If a family doesn't make it, it's the man. If the country struggles, it's the president. If a company is in trouble, it is the CEO. This is our programmed thinking. But let's have a moment of clarity.

Each decision we make leads us down a road. Often, we blame the residents of the road we chose for making our lives difficult, but they have always been on that road. That is where they live. We decided to use it and thus, we cannot complain or blame for our own decision. What am I talking about? 

When you decide to interact with someone, you have no clue what their addition to your life will bring. If they bring complications, you may blame them. But, didn't all this begin when you decided to allow them into your life? And if so, did you maybe get ahead of yourself? Did you ignore wisdom? And along another line of thinking, have you considered that there is nothing wrong with either of you? Maybe you are just not meant to be connected?

You see, we are godlike in our ability to decide. That is why prison is such a terrible experience, because it severely cripples your ability to decide. In that ability, there is a huge responsibility to make good decisions. When we make careless ones, it cripples our lives and the lives of others. So, my one "bad" decision may motivate your "bad" decision, which causes other "bad" decisions to be made and that ripple continues endlessly until we learn that we are continually deciding and can decide differently at any time we want. We must accept responsibility for our own lives, not leaving it to chance, to others, or living it carelessly, but living it on purpose.

If my country is struggling, it doesn't matter how much others are doing wrong until my own failures in patriotism has been addressed. If my company struggles, before I blame the leadership, I must ask myself how much am I investing in the success of the company. If my marriage struggles, before I blame him, I must take a serious look at my own issues within the marriage. You see, the secret to a purposeful life is seeing yourself as a developing individual and learning from all your interactions, both "good" and "bad" ones. When we point the finger completely outside us, it also removes our power to affect the outcome of any situation. I don't like feeling powerless, but to wield my power, I must also wield my responsibility. 

It'd be a huge blessing to see you over at Officially Lacresha Hayes interacting. Also, like our Your Healing Partner page and help us spread the word about some powerful, life-changing posts.

As I sat in a reflective moment, I pondered my prior jealousies.

In my previous marriage, one day my husband showed me where he lost his virginity. While it did not create a particular stir in me that day because we often shared everything with each other, it did become an inner issue later on.

On another day on our way into Memphis, we were having a great time and I felt close to him. So as we passed the apartment complex off the side of the interstate, I felt a tug. There was a grief that hit me hard and threatened to suffocate the remainder of the day as I went along distracted. At that time, I still did not understand what I felt and my mind was not yet ready for that level of enlightenment. But now...

In a recent moment of conversation with God, a moment of quiet heart prayer, I found myself saying, "I don't want to miss another moment. I already missed enough moments." And for a second, I remembered that apartment complex. I remembered the grief. I discovered what I felt back then was the pain of a missed moments. 

When you fall in love, you desire to be all you can to and for that person. You become their biggest cheerleader. And as time passes, you hear more and more stories and you find yourself longing to be a part of those moments, to witness the look, hear the sound, capture the aroma of each memory. If you happen to feel things as deeply as I often do, you can feel cheated. Jealousy can then rear its ugly head.

Reasonably speaking, there is no way for two people to share every moment. In fact, even trying to do so will block many moments from happening. Personally speaking, my jealousy over this or that missed moment almost always turned into more missed moments.

Amazingly, when I began asking God to deal with my jealous streak, the work began on my thinking. My nature was possession and ownership. I thought in terms of mine and yours. But relationships are not about possession and ownership. It is about uniting, not acquiring. It is about an entity bigger than either called WE and the beauty of building a we state with your mate is seeing the prior coloring of each other's former life, hearing the words and watching the reactions to a memory of yesteryear that tells you what you need to know for today. In a little shift of perspective, I realized that the people we are today are product of yesterday and no moment from before is missed because they are housed in that being in front of me that I love so much.

Now, rather than grieving over the past moments, I celebrate the now moments. Living in the past always comes at an exorbitant cost, the cost of today. You cannot occupy them both at the same time. Any moment you did not witness was not yours. It did not belong to you. These moments, these activities, even these emotions are yours. NOW is yours. The life God has given you has been fully stocked and you're missing nothing. So now, when I hear the stories and see the joy of yesteryear, I can still celebrate without feeling cheated because in so many ways, as a unit, his experiences become my own. We can share our moments even when we are not in each other's presence.

What are we thinking as time breezes by us? Are we willing to remain painfully unaware of the truth of life until it is too late to do something different?

These days as this decade of my life passes me by, I'm filled with questions for my generation. I'm saddened by some of the things I see and hear. So many people are partying and crying and drugging their way to their end with no hope or expectation for the next plane of existence. They are in a vicious cycle of being hurt and hurting others. Then, the circle of pain and anguish extends further and further until none are untouched by it. Let me go a little deeper so you can see my point.

I was raped by a minister. Upon further investigation, we discovered that he himself had been molested by his uncle. He'd grown up an abused young man with no intervention and no understanding. Thus, he became an abuser. It was most unfortunate to find out I was not the only victim and that young ladies in his wife's family had also been victimized. He was the father of daughters who are definitely not safe. I had every reason to hate this man, even to make an attempt on his life the way I desired to. But there were his daughters looking up in my face as I confronted their father. His wife, already suffering a chronic illness, already torn apart inside, was looking at me. He had a family and no matter how terrible his actions had been, it wasn't in me to make them suffer more than they already had for something he done. So it ended with me praying for him and his family, believing God to do whatever it is HE deems necessary. I had to have mercy upon him though he'd had none upon me.

For healing to begin, someone has to administer mercy and love. It can't happen in justice and vengeance. Justice and vengeance require punishment and further affliction upon an already afflicted soul. How can a wound heal when damage is constantly being done to the area?

The point of life is not pain and affliction. The purpose of life is to paint a portrait of love, to be Love's conduit to one another and express the full creative powers thereof, beginning with applied mercy. Sure, it hurts sometimes because we're in a fallen world, meaning most people have been separated from their purpose, have lost their passion and their love has grown cold. But even in this fallen world, we should not allow ourselves to be sucked in. We must hold on to and maintain our faith and purpose. We must keep mercy square and center because we are never in a time when we ourselves do not need it. And really, a merciful person experiences joys and beauties most other people will never know and words can never explain. A merciful person experiences a closer, more peaceful, more purposeful walk with God. A merciful person is an aware person, someone who has tapped in because sometimes mercy simply isn't within our human capacity. Some things we cannot get over on our own, but through the Source, we can break the cycles and overcome anything, everything. Through the mercy of God, when applied to our daily lives, pain is alleviated and mental anguish. Mercy brings about peace.

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October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month and with the flurry of activity you may have in your life, I decided to remind you of the most important thing in your life, YOU!

Please use the Hotline website or call the toll free number, 1-800-799-7233. If you know someone who has been abused, I suggest you pass the info along and if they need reading material to guide them back to the road of wholeness, my book, THE RAPE OF INNOCENCE (available on this site and Amazon), is an excellent resource. Be safe, my lovelies!