I find it easy to be carefree and assume that bad things will never happen to me. Disaster seems to happen so far away from where I live. It happens on TV, it happens in the paper, it happens in the news, but it never happens here.
I also find it easy to boast of my extreme confidence in life and in God. I have noticed that I claim not to let the little things bother me and that it's important to keep a good attitude, no matter what the situation. God is in control, right? Any trials are but bumps in the road and must simply be overlooked.
But the hypocrisy of it all hit me in the face. It's fairly easy to keep a smile on your face when your life is all rainbows and roses. What about when you break your hard drive and lose almost a life's worth of data? What about when your home and the homes of your friends and family are destroyed in an earthquake? What about when you lose a friend in a freak accident? When you're stabbed in the back by someone you loved? Where is the joy you once boasted about?
I realized that my life rarely veers off the track and when it does, I lose it. I lose my composure, my patience, my temper and my faith in the One who promised to get me through it. God promised to give me joy and strength through all things, but when the going gets rough I push Him away, only to let Him back in when I've got things under control again. "See, God? I figured everything out and now I'm full of your joy again, aren't you proud?"
I desire the joy of the Lord in all things, but most of all, I desire it in the lowest and most pitiful moments. The ones where I've been stripped of all of my pride and sense of belonging, and the moments in which I have every right to be miserable.
I feel like when I have joy where there should be misery, God has accomplished a great thing.
This is SO true. You know me...I'm such a control freak. I live by schedules, and by having everything under control. It's those times when I feel like I can incorporate God into my life. But when my whole universe is spinning out of control around me and God gives me the chance to fall into His arms and surrender, saying that I can't do it by myself, I choose to push Him away so that I can fix things by myself. What?!? Yeah...It's true. Why? I don't know! God gives us those "bad" things so that when we are most vulnerable we will look to Him...but we're just really stupid.
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