NOT EVERY DAY BRINGS SMILES

We live in reality. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we cry. I enjoy life every day, but there are those many moments when I get down. I'm terribly insecure. What's ugly is I'm much better than I was when I first came to Memorial. My feelings got hurt over air. It didn't take much to rush me headlong into moody sulking. I was notorious at suffering from self-induced misery. Actually, I led most effectively in the monumental and treacherous zone of self-pity.

The Word has changed much of that for me. It's most daring, really, in its call to gain better perspective over our days. I've focused on these passages and they have worked me over:

• Everything that happens is a "Yes"....II Cor. 1:18-20. If it is a "Yes" then I must seek such a term in every event. Scoot over moodiness. Hello happiness.
• All days are good days.....Rom. 5:1-5. Those that are good are good. Others which are bad are good. Something good is always going on in the center of the disparaging.
• God can make cinnamon rolls out of dented fenders....Rom. 4:17. The terminology is an admitted stretch on my part. However, this verse says God can do anything....anything. I've become accustomed to expecting it.
• I can completely discard my nature to control people and situations.....Rom. 9:16. Circumstances are not up to me to guide nor to fix. They are up to God. I will be available to apply myself with fullest energy, but I will not take the reigns of worry and begin to press. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then I must be having another good day!
• Everything will be okay....Rom. 8:28. I don't have to question the discouraging stuff. God's alive in the very essence of the moment which is causing me tears. I am free to cry, but I don't have to assume defeat. Even the struggles contain buried blessings.
• In all matters the believer is victorious....Rom. 8:37. Whether life or death, etc., God has decreed His children victory. We win in the birthing room and at the funeral parlor. We win at the revelation of a miracle and the discovery of a tumor.

Yes, I still find myself dealing with frustration, opposition, and discouragement. The good news is it is so much more contained than in my earlier days. Increasingly, He calms the struggle of being human as we grow in taking on His divine nature. Growing in the Spirit of Christ is not a religious exercise to take up our time. It's His life being super-imposed onto/into us. The more we allow it, the more we enjoy being us.