Life's Defining Moments

I was reading the Omaha World Herald today and stumbled upon an article entitled “Artist captures life’s defining moments”. It was an article about an artist who is sketching portraits of people with diseases such as AIDS and ALS (aka: Lou Gehrigs disease). After reading a portion of the article I found myself fixated on the headline. Especially the words…’life’s defining moments’. I began to wonder….what are life’s defining moments? Finding out that your body is riddled with disease would definitely be a defining moment in your life, but there are others such as your wedding day, a birth of a baby, and the death of a loved one. All of those are ‘defining moments’.

As I pondered this thought I couldn’t help but think of my life. What are the defining moments in my life? Better yet, how have they ‘defined’ me and what does that really mean? I looked up the word defining in the dictionary and there were several answers. However, there was one answer that really stood out.

Defining: to make clear the outline or form of

Defining moments ‘shape’ our lives. They make clear the outline or form of our lives. They have the ability to change us for the better and they have the ability to change us for the worse.

There have been several ‘defining moments’ in my life, but the defining moment in my life was falling in love with Jesus. That moment truly formed and outlined my life…and it continues to shape me daily. Loving and following Christ has taught me that while there are always moments in our lives that have the ability to shape us, we can choose how we will allow them to shape us.

Every day that I choose to follow Christ, I allow Him to shape me to look more like Him. Every day I choose not to follow Christ, I allow the moments of the day to shape me. We are being shaped daily by someone or something. Whether it is friends, family, or circumstances we are being shaped daily. It’s up to us to decide who or what we will allow to shape us. Today….I will choose Christ. I pray that I will always wake up and make that decision….no matter what ‘defining moment’ is taking place in my life.