Not five minutes after I posted my last essay, "Bad Days," on this blog, my life hit the skids. Now, before everyone panics and starts asking me what horrible ordeal I went through, let me clear some thing up. In the grand scheme of the universe, the skid that my life hit was not overly terrible. I am still physically healthy, my family is all intact, and my house is still standing. But I wasn't expecting the skid that I hit and it threw me off balance.
Five minutes after I posted "Bad Days," my daily routine was thrown out the window. I, like every other human, am a creature of habit, I need my life to be somewhat orderly, with something resembling a schedule in my daily life. And recently that just hasn't been possible. Everywhere I turned, a new and unexpected wrench is thrown into the works: I was asked to work a lot of extra shifts, a missions trip I'm going on is happening soon and I'm not prepared, I'm trying to keep up with two blogs on a semi-regular basis, my weekly commitments keep getting rescheduled, and to top it off the weather in my part of the world has been terrible recently. While none of these are terrible, I didn't see them coming and they frustrated me.
As I was stewing in my frustration last week, I began to think - mainly about how crummy I felt and how nice it would be if my schedule could get back on track. But besides that I had a realization. I had been so focused on how crazy my life had been and how stressful each subsequent day was that I had completely forgotten my own advice. In the midst of my stress, I neglected to see that I had entered a valley. I walked right into it without seeing it and then proceeded to get angry when my life wasn't going the way I wanted it to. I stood at the lowest point I could find and shouted my frustration that I wasn't on top of a mountain. My anger clouded my vision so much that I forgot I was not alone it this most recent valley. If I had only looked next to me, I would have seen God waiting at my side, just waiting for me to ask for a helping hand. I made the mistake of shouting at God instead of asking for his help. The harder I tried to climb out of the valley by myself, the deeper it got. The deeper it got, the angrier I got at God. But all the while I just needed to remember that he's always there.
I cannot put into words how humbled I was by the realization of my mistake. How could I have forgotten my own advice so fast? Why had I gotten so angry? There was nothing to do but let go of my stress and let God carry me to the closest mountain. I wish my vision had cleared sooner, but because it didn't God was able to show me how much I screw up on a daily basis and demonstrate his love for me. He used a valley to teach me a valuable lesson. The hardest climb up a mountain can reveal the most beautiful view from the top, but you can only get there by being carried by a wonderful loving God.
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