I had a bad day this week. The details are completely unimportant but think hormones, stress, lack of sleep and close encounters with crabby people. Hard to have a great day with all those irritations present. Too hard apparently for me because I didn't have one. I had one of those days where I didn't have a good time and didn't act like I was having a good time. You know what I mean? I not only didn't act like I was having a good time, I acted like I was having a bad time. I was awful. Ever been awful? Trust me, it makes you work overtime trying to find someone, anyone to blame for your behaviour. Wish I could think of someone who could be responsible. So far, zippo.
Same week, new day and I have a great day. I don't mean a good day or a nice day, I am talking slam dunk, home run, you name it, it's golden. I got two major projects completed. I got some answers to prayer and it appears that the vision and direction we have been praying for is taking shape. I am awed and amazed that God could love me enough to shine this much glorious light into my life and I am pleased as punch to be alive and in ministry. I sang all the way home in the car, each song better than the one before. My friends are fabulous, I am loved and cared for, I am filled with so much joy that I cannot calm down enough to sleep.
Same person, split personality? I don't think so. Although once when working an Emmaus weekend one of the ladies said, "this is so much work it's going to take all my alter egos". I have learned enough to know that while outside influences certainly effect our mood, our days, and even our attitudes, we are the ultimate holders of the peace. We can decide to let stuff bug us and we can choose to continue to be at peace, remain joyful. I know this is true, I have observed it and once or twice even practiced it. So, that being the case, why on earth don't I choose it all the time????
I somehow believe I am entitled to have a bad day and behave like an idiot from time to time. I think I collect and store hostility so that at the appointed time, on the appointed day I can let it all go, behave like a ninny and then feel remorse afterwards. Wonder why I think this is a good idea. I have sometimes felt a great sense of relief from saying things in anger things that I live to deeply regret. Wouldn't it make my life a lot easier to choose not to say them?
My mom and dad were smokers. They smoked all of my growing up years and despite many lectures and impassioned speeches from their children, my parents never quit until my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and had a very short time left to live. After my dad's death I remember my mom talking about feeling like she deserved a cigarette. That seemed so ridiculous to me. She needed the very thing that lead to my dad's death. She managed to hold on and she is completing her 9th year smoke free. I guess the point is, she felt like she was entitled to continue a bad and dangerous habit because it was a stress reliever, and she rode through the thought and is now still free of the addiction. Do you know how much easier it would have been to stay where she was? She would no doubt be smoking today, there would always be a reason for her to continue. Before I get nasty comments, I am not anti smokers. I just think that finding a reason to continue anything that makes you feel nasty and is a threat to your health, is probably a bad thing.
So, if my mom could do it, surely I can too. I am thinking about how I am responding to stresses and I am praying that God would gently continue to work in me so that I recognize these places where my default is not helpful, not healthy, where it is harmful and adds to the problem. I am praying that having been given vision, God will then give me all that I need to make a different choice, more often anyway that I am making now. One day I would love to celebrate 9 years of freedom from that dreadful feeling of remorse that washes over me and the decrease in those "I have just done it again" moments. We call this sanctification, the process of being made holy, but I think the title means nothing. It is becoming the people we already are in Jesus. Paul called it taking hold of what Christ has taken hold for us.
Practice makes perfect. Guess I better get to it.
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