OUR HANDS IN THE LORD'S

My friend (won't tell her name) bemoans the difficult life she lives. To her it seems like life is nothing but one struggle after another. She eats trials for breakfast... strife for lunch... and misery for dinner. She's up to here with the turbulence of a misery blotched existence. To quote her.

Gosh, that does sound so gloomy and depressing. I sat there listening to all her woes; she needed to get it off her system or I would guess she would explode. But she's still here standing and waking up every morning maybe without the smile that we should be giving the start of the day.. but she's up just the same. To face her battles once more I suppose.

That's courage, whether she knows it or not. And maybe somewhere there inside her small frame is a tiny spark of hope... maybe still believing that someday she will find relief to all her troubles. She won't tell me,  but when I see her look out afar with her sad eyes I can sense the faint ripple of hope in those otherwise sweet brown eyes.

Because she believes in God. She prays maybe harder than we do. Probably shedding buckets of tears alongside it. But she prays.  I love her for that, admire her even more.

This brings to mind a beautiful song by songwriter Thomas A. Dorsey in 1932....

"Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand;
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home."

You know in truth, we're all so much like my friend at some point or another.

May I request you to include a tiny prayer for her... and for every person on this planet who is going through the same challenges and troubles of life... for us all...  to put their hands and our hands in the Lord's --- "The God Of All Comfort".

Blessings and do have a blessed day.

TROUBLES AND WASHING MACHINES

Sat in the garage and watched my eldest daughter working the washing machine on the laundry. Not much on the pile but she insisted to do it even if I told her to wait for the wash lady. The wash lady comes to the house once or twice a week to do the dirty clothes. Anyway, back to my daughter. She then placed all the whites in first and as the machine did its job she moved over to the colored ones to sort out those that needed to be washed separately. You know, some colors stain while others hold on good.

Well, I shifted my watch back to the washing machine which was now gleefully tossing and turning clothes around in a big crazy whirlpool. Boring? Yeah after awhile, who says it wouldn’t be?! But I wasn’t there to be bored, far from it. Something else was on my mind.

The thing about washing machines, aside from its apparent use and purpose in our homes, is that it reminds me of ‘troubles’. You know those unwanted disliked hated treacherous and mind-boggling bits and pieces which cause so much misery and strain to our lives. Troubles which in a huge way and manner halt our progress wherever we had planned to go, create so much unnecessary friction and resistance, and sometimes manage to push us over the cliff. Heaven forbid! It doesn’t care if we get hurt in the process; in fact it’s there to hurt us --- albeit a common perception.

But honestly although troubles seem to appear as the big villain in our small usually ordinary lives, it’s not really what it’s commonly perceived to be. Yes, it does shake us to the core, uproot us from comfort zones, toss and turn us around in frenzy, hammer us to the ground, beat us till we’re black and blue. And that’s not even all.

Yet have you noticed what comes after? What becomes of you particularly? Let’s see ….

- A pledge to fiercely beat the odds at all cost given another chance
- Anger translated into positive resolve and action
- A sudden burst of new hope and optimism
- Willingness to change after the hurt and pain of failure
- Seeing life with better clarity and vision
- Nudged to tackle anew challenges with fresh tenacity
- Wiser and smarter after having learned from the experience
- Kindled the almost dying flame of faith and conviction
- Enlightened and strengthened relationships

And many more added to that list. You know them in your heart. So then…..

“Troubles are like washing machines -- They twist, turn & knock us around, but in the end we come out brighter than before.” - Anon.

INTO EACH LIFE SOME RAIN MUST FALL

Trouble comes like rain, so I've been told. But there is no trouble-free life. really. Not even for Bill Gates or the Queen of England. There’s no guarantee that things won’t go wrong, malfunction, break down, go off tangent or totally miss the mark because it does and will. Rain pours down equally on the good and the bad, the rich and the poor, the sick and the healthy, on tattered threads, and on your best Sunday suit. Troubles, like rain, don’t choose their target; no distinctions made, everybody is fair game.

That’s just what I hate about it. I wish that it would pick the likes of a Princess of Someplace or the Maharajah of a kingdom. Lol But, please, spare little ole me-- an ordinary small unknown teeny-weeny person that could very well go through life unnoticed and rocking nobody’s world! But alas it does pick on me, too, and so with every blob of head inhabiting the face of the earth. Why? Because!

Exactly, there’s no plausible explanation why. Troubles come, like it or not, and no amount of pleading or sweet talk can make it skip you. It’s not like .....

'Hey, if I promise to clean up my room, eat my vegetables, and love my enemies, will you NOT come to my door?’

You know what it’ll say to that? “Sure, buddy, clean up your room and the garage, too; devour your vegetables till you puke; and love your enemies till they drop dead incredulous over you --- BUT I’m coming just the same!”.

Can you believe that?!! SOMEBODY stop the world and let me out!! :-)

PASS QUICKLY THROUGH YOUR TROUBLES

Problems, trials, difficulties, struggles, misfortunes, thorns or whatever else it is called but life surely has a good stack of them to keep us at our wit’s end. Whether they are gigantic or minute these problems can prick us where it can hurt us most -- And how we hurt! The thing is we can’t seem to get us out of there and I wonder why. Is it because being so overwhelmed by it we get dumbstruck and stuck to our shoes where we are? Or… because in our muddled up brains we can’t see anything beyond it? Or…that something got lost inside us and we don’t know how to get it back? Or…might it be that we have hang on doggedly to an idea that someone or something will come soon and pluck us out of our misery? To the latter I’ll say maybe and maybe not.

You do know that ‘life is what you make of it’, as a saying goes. So whether to welter in misery or get on the first plane out of there pronto, so to speak, is all up to you. The longer you stay in a situation where it can hurt you the harder it will hurt you – the harder it will harm you. And soon you will find yourself begin to lose the power to change. You certainly don’t want that, do you? -Because change and only change is your relief and deliverance from your perceived misery.

"Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us." -- Voltaire