I have a friend who didn’t get married until she was in her 40’s.  Most of her life she wanted nothing more than to get married, to have kids and be a mom.  Yet, that’s not how her life went. Rather than waiting around for the right guy to come along my friend decided to live her life as fully as possible.

At one point she moved halfway around the world to work with college students in an Eastern European country. She seized the opportunity even more by using her new home base as a launching point to travel throughout Europe over the years she spent there.  She traveled, went places and enjoyed a certain freedom that I am sure she would not as a married woman with kids.

In changing her mind, she changed her life.

She used to think, “What I want most in life is to be married.”

Now she thinks, “I want nothing more than to make a difference and to live out my life fully wherever that takes me.”

Holocaust concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl said,

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.  Victor Frankl

Sure, things haven’t turned out like my friend thought they would by now, but her life is far better than if she would have staunchly held to a belief that marriage and family were her only path to be happy and fulfilled. You can’t always choose what happens to you but you can choose to change your mind and your response to those experiences.

And, for the record, my friend is having a phenomenal impact on students in Eastern Europe.

You are more powerful than you realize. The power to carry out things you never thought possible lies within your own mind and thinking. Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in certain, self-limiting ways of thinking and never fully move into what we are capable of. We think….

I will always be fat.

I’m miserable in my job, but I can’t quit because I would lose too much.

My kids don’t like me and that’s their problem, not mine.

I’m not the type to ever accomplish anything important in life.

If only I were married (or richer, or lived somewhere else, or smarter) I would be happy.

And on it goes, the lies we tell ourselves. In every one of those examples, there are choices to make, a mind that can be changed, a new and better future to experience. 

What is it you want? How might a change of mind begin to move you towards that a new and better future?

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.  Romans 12:2