Ready or not

27 Aug Ready or not

My son’s favorite game at the moment is Hide and Seek.  Although he can count well, when it’s my turn to hide, he generally does a shortened ‘one, two, skip a few, ten’ before he calls out “Ready or not, here I come!”.  He’s caught me unawares a few times, sometimes before I’ve even reached my hiding spot.

Life is a bit like this.  So often we are thrown into something completely unexpected.  Something we don’t feel ready for.  Something catches us before we’ve had a chance to hide from it.  Falling pregnant without planning to, or not being able to fall pregnant when this is the time you’d planned for it to happen.  Being weakened by a sickness that requires extensive treatments and medication.  Being offered a promotion at work, when you don’t feel you’re ready for the next level of responsibility, but someone else clearly does.  Losing someone you love to death or debilitating disability.  We’re never ready for any of these things, but they still come.  They find us, even when we try to hide.

Most of the time, we can look back at these times and think, “I made it. We made it through.”  But my goodness, it is tough when we’re in it.  We doubt ourselves and those around us, we find everything and everyone possible to allocate the blame to.  We break ourselves down with negative thinking when we should be training our hearts and minds to focus on the positive thoughts.  We all have the strength within us to pull us through these moments of heartache, to overcome each day of the challenge.  We have to find it and focus on it.

When you believe in a God that works for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28), we can hold onto the knowledge that there is someone greater at work than ourselves.  We can believe in something bigger, even when we just can’t seem to figure out the answers now.  We can find a hope that shines a glimmer of light in even the darkest, most stressful of circumstances.

We won’t always we be ready, we won’t always be able to hide, but we can embrace the moment when it comes.  Whatever it may bring, we do have the strength to tackle it head on and we can have a hope to look forward to each day as a fresh start.  One more day to appreciate life and all that it brings.