Often times when “bad” things happen to us we question why. We feel and act like victims and may even curse the day we were born. It is not easy to navigate this life when your intentions do not bear the kind of fruits you had in mind. Too often people, like me and you, become disillusioned with the twist and turns that punctuate our lives. DIsturbances as we see them, that happen maybe when we least expect them or produce our greatest fears. There is a tendency to be angry in these situations, to feel trapped and oppressed.
So, it is hard to think that there is anything good to see in these situations much less to see them as a blessing. I have learned that hard times produce the opportunity for us to not only mature but to flourish. When we get too comfortable where we are, we may feel reluctant to “rock the boat”, and accept where we are, who we are and how we have come to be perceived as our lot in life. But here comes those lessons that say, “no this is not your final destination, you have to be stretched a little more, melted down to the liquid fire and beaten into a new shape”. We are there resistant, resentful and hopeless, waiting for it to end. By it I mean this season of hard lessons, the experience of the hard-knock life. However, it can be that our greatest strength can come from these surely hard lessons. We are forced to work from our survival and with it and toughness develops, when we choose to stick around, that can take us through another hard knock. With each of those knocks out toughness becomes more improved until we can better appreciate the hits and even welcome them because they really allow us to live life fearlessly, or with a little less fear even.
For all the things we can gain, awards and wealth, it is those difficult times, sometimes the hardest in our lives that are the real treasures on earth. It is never easy to reconcile the painful experiences that we have blessings as we have become too focused on blessings that lead to matchless prosperity. How about we shout amens for those lessons, hard lessons that lead to our blessings, true blessings not limited by a limited and our very human understanding.
ramblrWrites.com 