Bad Days

Have you ever had a day like this? You wake up in the morning and from the very first moment, everything seems awful. You want to crawl back under the covers, close your eyes, and shut out the pending awful day, but you know that life has to happen so you force yourself to get up. After leering at yourself in the bathroom mirror and pulling on the most comfortable clothes you can get away with at work or school, you drag yourself to the kitchen for breakfast. But the awful day has just begun, so within two minutes you manage to spill coffee in your lap, knock over your bowl of bland cereal, and accidentally kick the cat or dog across the room.

With a defeated sigh, you mop up your mess and head out to your destination, dreading any and all human interaction. As soon as you step past your doorstep, a wave of inconvenience hits you in the face and sends you reeling. Your car won't start or you forget to stop at a stop sign and end up getting a ticket from the police officer who seems determined to add on to this horrible day by being a stick in the mud. When you reach school or work, you end up being late because of the ticket and every annoying person comes out of the woodwork to torment you. Everywhere you turn, one thing after another gets in your way, making you dread your life, and making you wish you could revert back to the age of five.

By the time you stumble back into your house at six o'clock, having been further inconvenienced by rush hour traffic and a driver going as slow as possible while in front of you, you are ready to collapse into bed and resign yourself to the promise of a better tomorrow. But it is not to be. Within moments of kicking your shoes off, the phone rings; it's your boss scolding you for leaving work when you had a stack of paperwork to finish. While you don't have to come back to the office, he tells you sternly that you have to come in early tomorrow and finish the work. You knew this day wasn't going to go well and now the horribleness has bled into the next day. So you hang up the phone, place it gently on the kitchen table, take a deep breath, and proceed to scream as loud as you can into the mocking calmness of your house. While this does release some stress, it also scares the neighbors who call the police. An hour later, you're still explaining to the officer who knocked on your door that you're just having a really bad day.

While this version of a bad day might be a little over-dramatic and I may have thrown in every bad day stereotype to get the point across, I think you all know where I'm coming from. Bad days happen - times when you just wish that the world would stop turning and you could go back to yesterday. During a bad day, you just can't seem to be positive about anything, everything seems terrible, and nothing would make you happier than if everyone left you alone. But there is a way that you can get through bad days.

The next time you experience a bad day, try saying this to yourself, "Jesus is always with me in the mountain and the valley." This might sound silly, and you don't have to say it out load, but it really is true. Jesus is with us in all our troubles. Big or small, he's there to see every moment. Life really is a journey, and on the way everyone will go over high mountains and low valleys. While it can be really easy to remember that Jesus is with us as we stand on the top of a mountain looking out over wonderful things, all of us forget to call out to Jesus in the valley when we need him most. I have never come to a valley and remembered to call out to Jesus before I walked into it. All of us do this on a daily basis. But no matter what we do, every time we forget to call out to Jesus, he is with us anyway. He loves us so much that he is always by the side of the people who forget he's there. In every valley, Jesus is with us waiting for us to remember him; he loves us and wants to carry us to the next mountain. So no matter how low the valley, no matter how hard the climb up the mountain, and no matter how bad the day is, remember, our savior is always there. Loving us, waiting, caring, Jesus.

9/11 Tribute

Freedom does not come cheaply; it must be fought for and believed in, and everyone must be willing to sacrifice to maintain it. America was a land of freedom - founded upon it and preserved through dedication and hard work. All people could feel a sense of pride when standing beneath the flag of this great county, the symbol of our greatness and the thing that bound all the people together.

On September 11, 2001, America was attacked. Evil people from a foreign country invaded this land and killed over 3,000 American citizens. No one expected it to happen and no one was prepared. When the Twin Towers fell, it seemed like America would crumble just like the buildings, the greatness of the country buried under all the rubble. It seemed like America was crushed; hope dwindled and went out.

But hope was reignited; our flag emerged out of all the carnage. Covered in dust and flying in tragedy, The Stars and Stripes continued on. It stirred the hears of everyone who had lost hope. It gave people a beacon to run to. It united a terrorized nation. The American flag rising out of the 9/11 rubble not only encouraged people, but it sent a message. America will not be crushed. We are resilient, a nation of 285 million people united as one. We emerged out of war in 1776, then rebuilt ourselves after the Civil War, and - no matter what comes at us - we will remain united and strong.

God bless America and keep it strong; give us hope in dark times.

In honor of the thousands of people who died on 9/11, never let their memory fade. Keep freedom alive; never let The Stars and Stripes fall.

*****
Photo Credit: Asbury Park Press
Source: President Bush's Speech, Ground Zero

Prayer Blog - Hopelessness

It is really quite sad to see someone who has no hope. A person who is so sad or angry that they have lost all faith in the world around them and the people in it. It's much easier to become hopeless then you might think; in fact I can safely say that every one of us has been hopeless many times in our lives. Times when we just give up trying and resign ourselves to melancholy.

I believe that there is one simple reason for hopelessness and one simple fix. We have lost sight off what really matters: God created us to be perfectly happy and to be joyful in his love, never wanting for anything except him, casting our eyes to him. But, because of this fallen world, our vision gets clouded more often than not; our worldly problems overshadow God and as a result we become hopeless. Cast your eyes once more to God, give him your problems, and you will have hope.

Pray - 

Dear Lord, please give us your strength. Let us once again desire to see you and know you. Let us put aside our worldly problems and hopelessness and look for you with all our heart. And, dear Lord, we pray for those who do not know you and therefore have no hope at all. Dear Lord, reach them please; give them a reason to hope again.

Page

The blank page - a writer's dilemma and worst nightmare, a bright, crisp sheet that is always a daunting task for the lonely person who sits in front of it with a pencil poised. Though this sheet is such a small space in the vast world, the sheer blankness of it can envelop the writer in one instant.

Such is the author's lonely lot - to fill this unfilled space of clean whiteness that seems to reach and stretch to oblivion. One would very well think that the writer would turn from her task and leave this blank page forever, abandoning it to time to collect dust without a single pencil mark on it. But for this very reason the author cannot turn away or cease to write, for in some way she is eternally linked to the blank page; it is her sole purpose as an author. It is part of her; she must fill the page.

It is her calling to fill all of the page, but, lo, the completion of one page only opens the way for another blank sheet. This is an author's lot, this never-ending stream of blankness never fully satisfied or finished. And yet so many travel down this path of blank pages and poised pencils; many try to fill the pages with their words. Oh, so many try.

But it takes a special person to truly fill a page. So many write words of grandeur and pomp, but there is no gravity in them so they are resigned to the great pile of lonely words written but meaning nothing. A true author's words must flow from the heart and not solely her mind.

Then there is the reason. A true author does not mind the never-ending pile of pages no matter how blank because it is all worth it; no matter the disappointments or the loneliness, the author knows that she is meant to be writing because the blank page is where she belongs.