Being Defeated

Being Defeated is often a temporary condition;

giving up is what makes it permanent.  

Every single one of us in our lives will suffer a little from defeat.  When I was young, we played sports, we raced bikes, we raced on our skateboards.  We played games.  I learned chess and checkers and cards.  I lost at most of them for a long time before I started winning.  I learned to roller skate (yes, at one time we had skates instead of blades!), and I fell down over 300 times on the first day of learning.  It was hard.  

I believe that every one of us needs to realize that defeat is only as permanent as we want it to be.  I can be beat for a game, or I never need to play it again.  I can fall down, but choose to get right back up.  It is always hard to keep trying, but losing is really a matter of attitude.  

I loved my skate board.  It was skinny and small and I could do jumps and ramps.  I have banged up my hands and knees and broken my fingers catching myself, but through it all, I had fun.  I ran, I raced, I lived.  

Sometimes, I think that we want everything right now.  We aren't always willing to work for it, or work toward it either.  It is like singing.  I love to sing, but I am only as good as I practice and study.  I have to practice reading the notes and work at getting them right.  When it all comes together, the music is amazing.  Giving up, is what makes it a noisy mess.  

One of my very favorite scriptures is found in Joshua 24:15

15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I love this because the people chose to be defeated.  They were on the "other side of the flood".  But Joshua did not make the same choice.  I love that he teaches that we all have choices.  We can make any one that we want to, but they all come with their own set of consequences.   Defeat is only as permanent as we choose it to be.