Sometimes things don’t turn out the way I’d hoped.
A job doesn’t pan out. The car breaks down. I can’t attend
that special event. No one notices me.
Life is filled with ups and downs. Disappointments play
teeter-totter with success. Confidence and insecurity duke it out in a game of tug-of-war.
Should minor bumps in our lives define who we are? Do we
allow today’s discouragement to affect how we live tomorrow?
In the movies, we’ve all seen the humorous scenario where
someone is chasing a person or an animal, and down they go, right into a soupy brown
wallow of mud. It’s good for a laugh. But the person falling down isn’t
laughing. We see delight in it because it isn’t us!
The mud is there. The
person falls in, often getting a face-bath of muck. And the thing is, they hop
up and continue chasing the dog—or whatever. There’s something about shaking
ourselves free of the grime and getting back to the business of living. We’re
not going to stay in that situation, covered in mud. It happened. Get on with
life. Take one step forward in front of the other until your footing is steady
again.
These things do test us. Some would even say they add
character.
I guess laughing long and hard after a setback might be the
perfect solution. But for most of us, it’s going to take a day or two before we’re
ready to laugh about falling in the mud.
As a believer, I know God has a good plan for my life. Some
things that happen I don’t understand. But I don’t want to wallow in the
situation, regardless. Even though I’m tempted to.
Oh, boy.
What I need to do is get
up and get going. Again. And again.
Annie sings that old familiar phrase, “The sun will come out
tomorrow.”
Bad things do happen. But so do good things. Sometimes, lots
of good things. And we call these blessings.
Occasionally, there’s a mud hole. A flop. A loss. A
disappointment.
So I say to myself, get out of the mud asap. Trust God. Walk
forward. Good is surely on its way. 