Listening to the radio in the car yesterday, there was a promo commercial for a concert coming up featuring Switchfoot. They played a snippet of the song This Is Your Life and it really got me thinking. The portion they played says, "This is your life, are you who you want to be?" Am I who I want to be? The short answer is no, no I am not. What's funny about that, is that for the first time in my life, that doesn't make me uncomfortable. For the first time that answer doesn't make me depressed and question who I am, but gives me hope, something to look forward to. I would like to think that I am better today than I was yesterday, but that is not always the case. Some days, I am the same as yesterday.
On a day to day basis, I do the best I can at being a Mother, a Wife, an employee, a friend, a daughter, a Christian. But multi-tasking is a blessing and a curse and if I really look closely, each of these personas only get about a 10% effort in a day in order to make up the total percentage of who I have to be each day. I want to be a better everything/everyone and I want to strive to reach that goal each and every day. But sometimes we get lost in the minutinae of the day and forget the bigger picture. In my attempt to try and finish a project for work, I ignore my daughter's pleas to go outside. In my attempt to rest at the end of the day, I don't cook dinner for my family like I should. In my attempt to find myself, I ignore my duties as a daughter or as a friend. In my selfishness, I choose to sleep instead of spend time with the Lord. And at the end of each day, I pray that tomorrow I can do better. Sometimes this may mean cutting something out, because somedays it just isn't possible to do it all. But really, at the end of the day, what you got done, is what you got done and is the world really going to end because there are dishes in the sink? The things that must get done have ways of rising to the top of our priority list, but sometimes our priorities are out of whack. Sometimes we needed to be reminded of the bigger picture.
Through out my life I have had many trials and I didn't always handle them well when I was in the midst of them, but my viewpoint on trials has changed recently. You see, if you think about it, we learn the most and grow the most when we go through trials. When living in the status quo, we don't learn big lessons, we don't grow our characters, we remain simply in the status quo. The status quo is comfortable, but if we live in it always, we aren't really living are we? If life is great, and everything is going along at an even pace, with no bumps in the road, we don't strive to be better, we don't strive to learn or grow. Think about when you fail at something. Do you analyze what went wrong? Do you learn from your mistakes? Do you change your actions in order to get different reactions in similar situations? The answers to all these questions, I hope, is yes. We analyze what went wrong when we fail. We learn, we grow. But, when we succeed, we generally as a rule, don't analyze what we did to figure out why we succeeded. We are too busy basking in the glory of our success. But did we really learn anything other than success feels good? Maybe on a occasion, but generally, we move on to the next big thing. So why is it so hard to look forward to trials, to want trials in order to learn and grow? Why is it so hard to try and see the bigger picture when we are in a trial? Why is it so hard to stop in the midst of a trial and ask ourselves, "What could God be trying to teach me? How is He trying to grow me?"
Since becoming a Christian, I am constantly wondering what God has in store for me. Knowing that God is my strength in times of trial, I am not so scared of what's to come. I wonder what trials He has in store for me, in order to help me grow and learn and become more like Christ.
James 1:2-3 "2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance."
This is your life. Are YOU who you want to be?
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