Recently, I became familiar with the term “cycle breaker.”  A Cycle Breaker is someone in your family who recognizes unhealthy familial patterns and chooses not to repeat them.  I come from a long family line of alcoholics.  This social disease has disrupted my family– maternally and paternally – as far back as we can trace.  While my parents were what some may refer to as “functional alcoholics,” a sober eye could see how dysfunctionally they were living their lives.  As an only child, this behavior was all I knew.  Naturally, I responded by mimicking and growing into this behavior and lifestyle.  As I grew older, life grew more difficult and it was harder to overcome obstacles and achieve goals with a dependency on alcohol.  I knew what I had to do in order to change my trajectory.  I had to become a cycle breaker.

Determination is overcoming obstacles in order to reach my goal.  The decision to live a sober life was the easy part.  The difficulties were family hurdles.  I became the outcast, the misfit, the Marilyn Munster of the family.  As hurtful as interactions were, I was determined to keep my eyes forward and remain on a path toward a faithful, hopeful, loving life.  Through clarity, I was able to understand our family behaviors and empathize with them.  Because of this experience, I was able to be fully present for each of my parents as alcohol has ultimately broken their lives.  Healing was introduced into our family through determination.

Sobriety is a daily choice and by the grace of God, I surrender every day.  It may seem odd to use the words determination and surrender in the same context.  When we surrender our own will, it frees us up to achieve the things that God made us to accomplish.  The psalmist says, “With all my heart, I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.”  He doesn’t say, “with some of my heart,” or “with a little bit of my heart,” but with ALL my heart, I seek you.  That is determination.

We often see motivational quotes from coaches like Vince Lombardi who said, “There’s only one way to succeed in anything and that is to give it everything.”  Determination is often recognized for big things like those who train for marathons or climb Mount Everest– but God has taught me to see determination in humans living their everyday lives.  Determination is taking the first step to achieve an overall goal.  It’s having the courage to live differently in front of your children to teach them how to fail and get back up again.  It’s supporting someone you love to help them achieve their dreams.  Determination is living intentionally and being in the arena.  It is often messy, which makes it beautiful.  Brene Brown said, “the willingness to show up changes us, it makes us a little braver each time.”

I’ll close with a famous quote from President Theodore Roosevelt remembered as the “Man in the Arena.”:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”