Excuses

Powerful word.

You are stronger than you think.
Your mother did not mean to have you, she's looked at you differently since day one and you've always known it. Your father walked away from your mother and you the day you were conceived and he has never tried to look for you or tried to find out how you turned out.Growing up, you have always been the one whose family tree only has a mother and so for the longest time, you have had a picture of the perfect dad from one of those shows you watched as a father figure.
Your stepfather and stepbrother have been coming into your room since you were eleven years old and your mother has no idea. Your friends laughed at you for falling pregnant at sixteen, said you could do better than that. So you took the pills to try to get rid of it but it almost killed you. You had a healthy baby boy.
There was never enough money to put you through college, so you had to work at the diner and the movie theater just to make ends meet. You were forced to grow up when the cancer got your mother and so it was just your brother and you.
Every single day, you have had to watch as those other girls drive past you in their Cadillacs. It took you the longest time to get out of college but you did. You've had to do some things you had never thought of just to put food on the table because the job did not come right away.
You've had to cry yourself to sleep every night and some nights you wish you could end it. You wish you could just take pills and fall asleep. But you know someone's got to look out for your brother and son. So you slit your wrists instead because seeing your blood gives you the illusion that you are ok.
That man promised to marry you but when the day came, he did not show up. Three years later you are still trying to hold it together and you see him with his two boys and lovely wife so you die all over again.
You constantly wonder if someone else is going through the smallest bit of what you are going through. Your neighbor has seen you struggling so he helps when he can but he doesn't have much either. He keeps telling you that someone will come for you and that you've just got to hold on a bit longer. Sometimes you want to believe it.
You have not prayed since your mother's death. Even then, it was just to ask God why but you never got the answer, or so it seemed.You've tried to hold it together, by yourself.
Yes you have gone through all these things, but what is your excuse for not doing what God wants you to do? Your problem is not that someone did not love you enough that's why you can't be better. It's not about who walked away from you. It's not about who raped you. It's not about who fell short of your expectations.
Your decision to rise up. That's what it's about. Do not tell the world that you are waiting for God to bless you, He's been waiting on you! Your circumstances do not define you! The thing that is supposed to save you has been inside you since the beginning. You've been carrying it for a very long time and that added to the weight of everything else you've had to carry.
Forgive yourself for all that you blame yourself for every night when you go to sleep. You are not the reason why people don't stay in your life. You're not the reason why everything seems to happen to you. Let it go. Stop holding onto the pain and surrender your all to Him. He'll take you places.
We all have stories. Do not let yours define you.