Fighting your battles

Everyone has their own inner battles to fight. Some of them are short lived others take years. I am currently fighting my own demons and my own battles. Some of the battles I am fighting are related to health issues, yet others are inner demons.

How do we learn to fight? I believe it is something from within ourselves, but sometimes we need help. We are put on the Earth to live not simply survive, but what does that really mean? We need to learn to enjoy life even in the midst of a battle. This I have had the most trouble with lately.

I have made grave mistakes in the past and they have returned to bite me recently. I am struggling with people defining me by one or two moments in my past. Can we really judge a person by individual moments? God does not want us to judge one another to begin with, but we as humans do this repeatedly. I try not to be guilty of this, but I suppose on occasion I am. I am really having a hard time with people doing this to me right now. I did not get a job because of individual moments in my past. This has really hurt me and made me become greatly discouraged.

While these moments do not define who I am, mistakes do change us for either the good or bad, and mold who we are. I have become a stronger person because of a myriad of mistakes in my past, but my mistakes do not define me as a person. What about the positives that have also molded me as a person? Shouldn't they out weigh the bad? Why don't they?

Society as a whole define people because of mistakes, poor choices, and other negatives, and rarely do the positives out weigh them. Take any famous person who has made past mistakes, they become defined by the bad. I noticed that in a story about John Edwards the other day that the reporter reminded viewers that he had a mistress. While this was a poor choice, it had nothing to do with the current story. No one will want to hire Manny Ramirez because he used steroids. He may have really gotten clean, but he will forever be defined as a liability for his mistake. Is this fair?

Some will say that these people had the opportunity to make better choices and didn't and trusting them is not easy. So many times people repeatedly fail us that giving people a second or third chance is very scary and we choose not to do so. I can certainly understand this. Sometimes people run out of chances. John Edwards made other mistakes in his political career so much that even if he were able to run for an office he would not likely receive enough votes. Manny made many mistakes as a player that makes him a liability and hiring him would be a great risk. But what about the average person who made mistakes, or who had a string of bad luck. How can we define them by one or two moments in their lives?

God gives us repeated chances. He never gives up on us. I just wish society could be a little more forgiving and a little less critical.