Choices. We are all constantly making choices – what we do, what we say, where we go. Even coming to this blog was a choice you made.

Your Choices Create Your Life

You choose your own path. You choose where you work. You choose whom you spend time with. You choose where you live. You choose what you study. You choose what you do in your free time.

You choose, and those choices strung together become your life.

Choices You Make Can Affect Others Significantly

Often, the choices you make affect other peoples’ lives significantly whether you realize it or not. We had such a choice back in 1993. But let me back up…

The orphanage matrons in our adopted country of Ghana where we were missionaries greeted me warmly as I came on my weekly visit to play with the babies.  I had heard that there was a new baby enrolled and I wanted to meet her. My teenage kids were home from boarding school and I thought it would be awesome to bring the new baby to our home for a few days to love on her and help my teens learn how to care for a newborn. The orphanage administrators allowed and encouraged home visits for the orphans.

But when I saw the tiny infant, my heart skipped a beat. She was only 4 ½ lbs at three weeks old. Her tiny perfect body hardly made a bump in her crib. My friends asked me if I wanted to take her for a home visit and I quickly declined. I knew she should be in an incubator and she was probably going to die. I would be so traumatized if she died while in my care.

My heart was burning within me as I returned home. I told my husband and 3 kids about tiny Zenabu and they all enthusiastically wanted to bring her to our home for a visit. We prayed about it and then decided to take the risk of having such a tiny baby in our care.

Zenabu stayed with us for three days and then with other missionary friends of ours for three more days. We put a pound on her during those six days (we weighed her on our friends’ meat scales!)

Her whole story will come out in a different post on my website in the near future, but let me get back to making choices.

Here is one of our big life choices: adopting Kinza!

We were seriously considering adopting Zenabu, but I knew this was a huge decision and I needed God’s wisdom for making the right choice. I happened to be reading in Deuteronomy 30 for my devotions that day and God made the answer so clear to me!  The entire chapter is pretty awesome, but let me share from verses 11, 14, & 19. He said, “For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach . . . But the word is very near you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may observe it . . . I have set before you life and death . . . so choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”

I guess you can’t get a clearer answer than that. “Choose life! You know what to do – it is already in your heart!” It is entirely possible that Zenabu would have died if we hadn’t adopted her – we don’t know.

We adopted Zenabu and added Kinza to her name which means ‘treasure’ in Arabic. When we were deciding to adopt her or not, my husband said, “I feel like the man in the parable who found a treasure in a field and then sold all he had to buy the field so he could get the treasure. I believe Zenabu is that treasure!” And we actually named her Kinza before we knew that it means treasure!

Kinza gets a family - we get a treasure!

Okay, back to choices. This, obviously, is an example of a big choice. Adopting Kinza changed the course of her life, my life, my husband’s life, our three biological kids’ lives, and, well, you get the picture.

Small, Daily Choices are Important to Healthy Living

But even the small, daily choices we make are so important to healthy, emotional living. You make a choice as to be cheerful or grumpy. You make a choice to love or not. You make a choice to forgive or hold a grudge. You make a choice to try again after a failure or not. The list goes on. Your choices can determine your success in life. What does success really mean to you anyway? Check out my post with thoughts on that here.

What kind of choices are you making? Big or small, they are creating your life map.

We chose to adopt Kinza (big choice). Later, when Kinza was 7 years old, we chose to buy a used piano (medium choice). Kinza then chose to faithfully practice the piano when she would rather be playing (small choice). Want to see the result of that string of choices? Click here for a video of Kinza performing on the piano at age 17.

Choices are powerful. Make your choices deliberately. Choose well. Don’t forget that the choices you make can impact others significantly too. And all those choices strung together make up your life story.

You can’t control what all happens to you, but you can control your responses. The choices, after all, are up to you.

One more thing, if you enjoyed this post, please choose to share it on your favorite social network. I great appreciate your awesome choice to help me spread the word.