Defining Moments

“Our lives are a series of defining moments, strung together by passing time.  Surrender fully to this moment, because it is not the moment itself that defines us, but how we choose to live in it.”

~Jill Pendley

Imagine having to make a decision today or tomorrow that can potentially define the direction your life takes in the future.  In every person’s life there are choices to be made and more often than not the choices get harder to make the closer you get to where it is that you want to be in your life.  We all have those moments, whether big or small, that will reshape our lives and define not only who we are and what direction we will take but also what we stand for.  Your defining moments, whether positive or negative, will inevitably be the outline for your life and will help you to get some clarity about your life’s purpose and values.  It is the way you choose to perceive those moments that will help guide you in one direction or another.  The choice is always up to you. 

There are times when you may find yourself standing still trying to figure out exactly what moment it was that changed the course of your life?  What moment was it that made you the person you are today and would you change things if you could?  Apart of being able to make good choices for ourselves is to be able to reflect on the bad decisions that we have made and to use those hard lessons to get it right the next time.  There is a lesson to be learned in every experience but that’s not to say that we don’t sometimes need to make those bad choices in order for us to appreciate the times that we do get it right.  The difference between a mediocre life and a great one is all in the way a person handles a handful of moments.  How they choose to act and react to them.  All of our greatest successes and our greatest failures are merely two sides of the same coin and it is all in the function of choice.  

All of the moments that helped shape our lives are not going to be positive ones but it is in the challenges that are presented to us that we strive and persevere.  Understanding the decisions you’ve made and where those choices have gotten you can make life a little less unpredictable and a lot less confusing and help you realize just where you veered off the course you thought you were on.  In order to figure out where your life is headed sometimes you have to realize where your life has been.  It provides great comfort knowing whether those decisions you’ve made along the way, good or bad, have helped make you who you are and knowing exactly what impact they have made in your life.  

In everyday life you will find that someone is always making you doubt your choices and that life is somehow always trying to knock you down and it may even succeed at keeping you down for a while.  It is you who have to take that particular moment in your life and figure out whether you are going to stay knocked down or if you are going to pick yourself back up off the ground and use that moment to empower you to move forward.   At each and every crossroads you are free to choose between the high road and the low road.  That defining moment is going to be in the decision that you make and that decision that you make could very well affect the course that your life ends up taking.  Have you done everything you could’ve done in those moments that life has given you? What do your defining moments say about you and your life and?     

Jimmetta Carpenter


The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”