This week we continue the thought that life is about making choices/decisions.

Doesn't it make you feel great when someone communicates to you the message that your life counts - REALLY COUNTS! I understand that we won't always feel that way but the "truth" or "reality" is that our life does really count! Throughout our lifetime, we will have many issues to process - issues that stem from our personal experiences arising from circumstances, events & people. But these "issues" that we will need to process don't DEFINE WHO WE ARE AS A PERSON! Successfully working through our hurts & pain increases our level of healthy functioning! We don't work on issues to "become a worthwhile person!" But it's because we already are an unique, precious, significant, worthwhile person that we choose to work on these issues. That's what mature & responsible people do: they keep on growing in their personal life! That's a choice they make! I enjoy sharing with people the analogy of how our life is like that of a snowflake - like a snowflake, there's never been and never will be anyone who is exactly like you...that's because you are completely unique - one of a kind - you're special - you're a classic! No one else has your mix of gifting, your mix of abilities, your mix of genes! There's nobody else quite like you! THAT'S THE WAY YOU WERE MADE! Is it any wonder that the psalmist in 139:14-18 describes us in these terms:

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand, When I awake, I am still with you."

So don't believe it when people communicate to you the message that we are a somebody only because of our attractiveness, our achievements or successes, or our position or status in life! You are a person of worth & value because that is what LIFE gives us! And LIFE gives us that worth because life is a gift from God:

"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,...' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."
Genesis 1: 26,27

(Continued next week)