Question: How do you learn to appreciate the different stages of your life?
This is a questions that has been haunting me lately. I am trying to understand this concept as my life seems frazzled presently. My kids are going through some interesting stages, they are sick with seasonal illenesses, work is very busy and oftentimes difficult to understand, we have a new business that Paige and I have started and that has some normal concerns, I don't seem to have the time to spend on IronMen that I desire and the list goes on. I know there are good and difficult things to each of these circumstances and my human nature is to focus on the "difficult". I know this is the mind games the devil plays in our heads.
Lots of times, your thoughts go to extremes during stressful moments. Example: Your work gets you down and you instantly think about changing jobs, your commute is long and traffic is traffic so you think about moving asap, etc.... Why do we do this? Why can't we learn to appreciate the things we go through for what they are? We are not promised a simple, easy life. We know that the life of a Christian is going to be hard and those are the time that we grow so much. After all, once this day is gone, it's gone! And really how bad are things? Probably not as much as we make them out to be.
Being Positive! What a concept and what a difficult thing to focus on. It is so much easier to focus on the negative side of things. We must go through the valleys to get to the mountaintops. Have you heard the Third Day song "Mountain of God"? This song describes it perfectly and here are the lyrics:
Thought that i was all alone,
Broken and afraid,
But you are there with me,
Yes you are there with me,
And I didn't even know
That i has lost my way,
But you are there with me,
Yes you are there with me
Till you opened up my eyes i never knew
That i couldn't ever make it without you
(Chorus):
Even though the journeys long
And the road is hard
With the one that has gone before me
You will help me carry on
And after all that I've been through
Still I realize the truth
That I must go through the valley
To stand on the mountain of God
As I travel on the road
That you have led me down
You are here with me
Yes, you are here with me
I have need for nothing more
Now that I have found that you are here with me
Yes you are here with me
I confess from time to time
I lose my way
But you are always there to bring me back again
(Chorus again)
Here are the comments from Tai Anderson, the Bass Guitarist from Third Day about this song:
We've all had those mountaintop experiences. You feel so close to God. You can see for miles. Vision galore. Then life happens, the valley, the struggles. We often think that the valley is a consequence for the sin of our life. But, maybe it's just our life. We're all promised struggle. We all experience suffering. The hope that we have is wonderfully expressed in this song. "You were there with me." We don't have to go through the inevitable trials of life on our own.
Stay Strong, PLD!
STP, an IronMan
1 comment:
Our life is seperated into phases and each of these have their on set of difficulties, we are promised difficulties, otherwise how will we ever be able to appreciate the good in our lives.
When you are older and look back on these difficulties we realize that it is true that difficulties mold character.(This sounds good and we know it is right, but when we are living through the difficulties it does not make them any less difficult.)
Example:
How would we ever be able to pay for our children to go the Christian schools both high school and college. It was very difficult, but we found a way with the help of God and his infinate wisdom of giving us ways to accomplish our goals. As we look back we realize that was the best decision we could have made, and our children are all Christians with Christian families and involved in various ministries.
There are many examples of things that seemed impossible at the time and as we look at them in the rear view mirrow we find that they were blessings in disguise.
Those things that are the easiest for us, we sometimes take them for granite, the ones we have to work on the hardest turn out to be the best.
As we lose members of our family we realize that these daily difficulties we go through are not so bad after all.
My advice is to Love God first and keep your Family and Friends close.
Post a Comment