Ever been in a really hard circumstance? A circumstance that made you so sad, maybe a little mad? Maybe a lot mad! Ever been in a circumstance that made your head spin, your heart ache? A circumstance that looked like the anguish of it, the suffering of it, would never end?
Life is hard.
When you love someone, life is never easy. Life is filled with our people, people we love…love is hard. Life is wrapped up in our people and life becomes filled with all kinds of events and situations, circumstances that affect us but also affect those we love. What do we do with that?
Every choice we make affects our people, those people we love. No matter what circumstance we are going through, hard, sweet, sad or mad. It is pretty easy if it is a sweet event, a sweet circumstance. Easy to let our choice overflow onto those we love and even everyone around us …a choice of love, of life, a choice of joy. Let’s do it again! Happy wife, happy life…easy.
Hard.
Hard if it’s a sad circumstance, the decision we make concerning that will affect our people too. Lots of things have the potential to make us sad, to make us mad, to make our head spin with anguish and our hearts deflate. Perhaps you are raising a child with special needs, or a teenager who is dealing with addiction. Maybe you have a family member who is not doing their fair share for you. Possibly you are living with sickness, an illness, a disease. Maybe your husband has left you, maybe, just maybe he has left this world, leaving a hole in you forever and ever... Hard things that have the potential to deaden our hearts. What are we going to do with those things?
I read somewhere that 'misery is selective' implying that misery is a choice to be selected. Little tick boxes neatly placed beside misery, beside joy. What are you going to consider, what will you choose?
"Consider it pure joy, my brother, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish it's work so that you may be mature and complete..." James 1:2
Trials, whenever, of many kinds, look for God’s grace, look for the blessing, if you can‘t see it, look harder…persevere.
To persevere in itself suggests some sort of suffering, it does, it is. I have been there. The people I love, the people in my life have been affected by my choices. Persevere...yes. Because sadness, suffering, and head spinning anguish will turn into joy, test it, try it, do it. I know it. Time and time again I have stabbed my stake in the ground and made my choice. sometimes it has been easy. Sometimes it has been HARD. I choose not to let that sad, mad, days-filled-with-anguish circumstance deaden my heart…what do you choose?
I choose life and by God's grace, the joy of it... birthing joy.
I love that.
