Sometimes even the best-laid plans go wrong. It could be something as simple as a dinner date being canceled, an illness right before a party, a job opportunity that falls through. And especially at Christmastime, we expect everything to fall into place and be happy and cheerful and joyous, because it should be, because that’s what this time of the year is about.
But I think everyone knows that things aren’t always as they should be. Maybe you’ve been handed something unfortunate recently, something you’re having trouble handling or is making you sad and subsequently guilty, because this is the time of the year for happiness and you aren’t feeling happy.
It’s okay. And even despite the tough thing you might be going through, that doesn’t mean that there is no happiness to be found. Paul, who authored several books of the Bible, was handed a trial in his life. (The trial is never mentioned specifically; he only refers to it as his “thorn in the flesh”.) And despite his trial, he remarks that “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”
It’s easy at times, for everything to be drug down by one unfortunate thing. If this is happening to you right now, take a moment to count all the blessings in your life, the parts of it and people in it that can comfort you, and measure them against your “thorn in the flesh”. Try to keep it all in perspective; don’t let your problem swallow even the happy parts of your life.
(Verses I cited about Paul came from II Corinthians 12:7 and Philippians 4:11.)
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Bryan said:
I’ve done improv comedy for the last 7 years or so and there’s a great philosophy in improv that connects with this post.
In improv you really don’t know what is going to happen next. Ahem, kinda like life :), but anyway. When you are in a scene, you are supposed to treat anything and everything that happens as a gift. There are no such things as mistakes. You just take what happens (whether or not some might think it was an error) and weave it into the quilt of the entire show.
If you keep looking at everything as a gift instead of a problem, you eventually end up with something better and different than you started with. It’s all about how you look at things.
Sincerely,
Bryan
January 17, 2009 @ 10:00 pm