For Better or For Worse (written by my son)

My 17-year-old son amazes me with his words and wisdom. For such a young man, he has already learned so much that most of us adults could only wish we had learned long ago. My kids have lived a very unordinary life, with exposure to trials and challenges of humanity on a different level. I suppose that's what happens when you've been a preacher's kid; you not only deal with your personal hurdles, but everyone else's troubles are thrown onto your path and you're expected to overcome those as well... and when the preacher's family goes through its own trials, that's where one's faith and foundations are truly tested. If we stay focused on the right thing, that is when we grow stronger. Our life's experiences and encounters with others have taught Britain some valuable lessons. Now, carefully read Britain's article, 'For Better or For Worse.'

Stop...

Stop right where you are and discover with me for a moment something that has recently come to my attention.
But before you read any further, I want to warn you... What you are about to read, you will be making a commitment to. How does that work, you ask? Well, lets think about it... The very moment that a thought or and action enters your mind, you have made a small commitment to it in the way that you will keep that thought/action locked inside a part your mind for the rest of your life. The mind is a very powerful thing, and no matter how hard you try to forget what you have learned or seen, you will not be able to erase it without the use of science and medical technology. (Extreme pressure to the head and unspeakable trauma also cause certain kinds of Amnesia, but neither of those methods are recommended.) As a matter of fact, the more you try not to think about what you are reading and experiencing, the more you find yourself lost in thought about it. This is why horror movies are just so affective. It's just the way that things work.

So imagine with me, if you will, that every single thought you make from now on is a commitment. Your eyes have now been opened and you can think in a way that you have never been able to think before. Every time you hear a word or think a thought, that thought will be married to your mind, stuck inside of a memory card that is no healthy way erasable and cannot be easily manufactured. It is a device unlike any other in the universe and cannot be treated as if it does not matter. This is the thing that drives you, the thing that keeps you alive. The thing that is causing you to feel the cold or the warmth of the air around you, the thing that allows you to control your body, to keep charge of every fabric and fiber that makes up your being, it is the very thing that is allowing you to read these words right now, and when you are done reading do not be surprised if you feel a slight buzzing on either side of your skull, your brain is simply processing all of the information. It has soaked things in for years and paid much attention to the world around you, but it has not become super familiar with the fact that everything that it has studied, it has also married. There are now some things inside that your mind is wishing it would not have married. Some things that your body caused it to marry, a marriage that your soul wishes desperately to revoke. But the slight tug of war between your soul, your mind, and your body, is unlike any other that has ever been. They all work together, only with slight discretions, and sometimes work to destroy each other even without your knowing.

This is not all to say that you are simply at war with yourself, though I did lean toward that just slightly at the end of the last paragraph. It is more to let you in on the gravity of this situation rather than the nonexistent levity that you may have looked at this with in the beginning.


Most of the time when you run into something in life, you have a choice, a choice either to accept it or deny it. A choice to trash it or recycle it for your very own use... Building onto the typical garden analogy, any seed you plant, whether you nurture it or simply throw it into the dirt behind you, will most likely one day grow to become something great or small. Even if you do try to neglect it.
Thoughts are the exact same way. When you have the opportunity to accept or deny a thought, think carefully about what you do with it. Many people accept the thought, knowing that even if they neglect it, it will come back to bite them, so they might as well think it anyway. Others just put away the thought and try their best to replace it with something that is completely different, but many end up falling susceptible to that thought even though they made the choice not to think it.I myself, have many friends who struggle with their own thoughts and end up at war with them, stuck in a place where the mind has become their enemy rather than the thing that pushes them forward to live life and to be all that they were meant to be. And it is mostly because of all these marriages that they have made. There are very few divorces that take place between the mind and a thought, and inconveniently, all the divorces that do take place happen to be with the things that we are SUPPOSED to remember! This is one strange thing I have not yet figured out; the mysteries of the mind will always intrigue me...

I could go on with growing and endless thoughts for hours, but for the sake of the reader, I will cut to the chase... There is a saying that you will find in almost any wedding vows, and it goes something like this... "For better or worse..." Imagine when you marry a thought, that you have said to that thought, those very words. "For better or for worse..." Then ask yourself if that thought will do you good... or bad. Will you turn that thought away, or will you accept it and feed it from day to day? Then when you have found yourself betrothed to a thought that seems to be working only for worse, ask yourself how you can make it a thought for the better things.
Truly, the only long-lasting way of making a bad thought work for the better, is to meet that thought with the Holy Spirit, and to look at it in His light... In His light only.

If you want to take this all a step further, imagine the marriages that you create every time you think of God and His goodness. Imagine how many thoughts of you He has made such beautiful commitments to. He said that His thoughts of you outnumber the sand. According to His words, no one, in mind, body, soul, or spirit, can make a bigger commitment to you than He already has. He has married you already...

You...


Are his Bride.


-Britain V.
11-12-11
5:11pm