Voices of Victory

[Okay, so today is going to be a double header as I was too exhausted at 12:30 AM and still didn't have my post together. Although, I did have a ton of ideas swirling around my brain, including the fancy title you see above.]

Voices surround us from all areas: the voices of our parents, our teachers, our friends, the newscasters, the radio DJs, celebrities, politicians, and all of the other voices of history that come to us through literature. These voices are the complexities that make up our experiences, they create the foundations of our personalities and opinions. What would we be without these viewpoints? How can we believe what we believe without a foundation? There is no way. People do not grow in a vacuum, it takes a catalyst, an idea. The question then becomes: what ideas are we receiving?

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We all have the voices of victory or those which rally in our defeat. A deception is created when we confuse the two. Not all voices of victory sound victorious and not all voices of defeat sound sullen. Many times they will sound the same and only when we closely analyze the meanings of the words and how they are meant to affect us will we have a clue as to which they really are. In my life, I have had friends and family who would give me advice that was wonderful and sincere, however, if I had followed it I would have found only heartache and defeat. I know because some advice I did follow, only to realize years later it was devastation.

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There is only one voice that will truly lead to victory and that is the still small voice of God. This voice resides in every person if they will only let him in and listen. Do not be fooled as I was, though. There is deception, mostly, it is in the form of things we want to hear. The things we tell ourselves, and when we listen to other voices around us without thinking clearly about what their conclusions lead to. Logic seems to be becoming a lost art, but it doesn't have to be. It begins with asking questions of ourselves and why we believe what we believe.

We are wonderful at deluding ourselves. At least I was. I really thought I had an open mind to see through delusions. The truth is, I was simply fabricating reality from what I wanted it to be based on my own experiences--without looking at what was actually happening around me. To create a dream board is one thing, but to ignore the reality, not factoring it into our logic, we fail to account for it and this leads to delusional behaviors and ideas.

There are those people who will act as a voice of victory, these are the tough love words of true friends and uplifting family. The words of advice from the trusted pastor who speaks truth when we don't want to hear it. The dose of reality from the professor who is trying to get us to think about ourselves or a controversial topic. These examples, along with many others too numerous to list, are the voices that really want to help us succeed. They value us not as pawns, but as human beings and seek to help us to see the truth of a situation even if it hurts us momentarily. They would rather have us hurt for a moment than see our lives shattered for years, or even a lifetime. This is victory.