You Command Your Own Floodgate!

 I have been dealing with some heavy things that have let floodgates burst open allowing fear, sadness, insecurity, anger, and a whole host of other negative emotions to run through my life like never before…which has only served to discourage, dismay, and detract from my focusing my attention on improving myself and diminished my desire to help others to do the same. 

 

But today I was reminded of something important – I was reminded that I am the one who controls what gets through the floodgates of my own mind, and each of you gets to control the floodgates of what gets through yours. As such, we don’t have to allow fear, sadness, insecurity, anger, or any other of those negative emotions to enter through our floodgates at all. We don’t have to turn on the 24×7 news broadcasts, and we don’t have to read all the negativity posted on social media, and we don’t have to spew out anger or unkindness toward others for thinking differently than we do. We don’t have to let anger, bitterness, or hate creep through our gate.

 

I was reminded that we can choose to instead walk by faith rather, not fear and worry. We can tune out the noise of the world and tune into the Spirit. We can choose not to get sucked in and distracted by all the avenues of media and use that time instead to improve ourselves mentally, physically, and spiritually so we are in better shape to be able to serve others. We can stand by our beliefs and live by our values without having to tear someone else down about theirs. We can love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us. We control our own floodgate. 

 

My belief is that we should all stop seeing each other as some sort of label and start seeing each other as brothers and sisters of our Heavenly Father…as FAMILY! And as family we should be trying to help each other to succeed, not celebrating or wishing each other’s failure. And while as siblings we may have times we disagree with each other’s views, not like one another’s decisions, or dislike something someone else has done, we have a Heavenly Father who loves each of us equally and unconditionally and He expects us all to love one another and treat one another as the family that we all are. 

 

I’m grateful I was reminded of this today because it helped me realize that all I needed to do to feel better about life was to close my floodgate. And it’s honestly amazing how much better that feels.