Discouragement? That's it? That's the topic? Couldn't I write, possibly, on the exponential thesis of exploratory fabricationalistic momentum? Hasn't the chatter of overcoming discouragement sorta become similar to a beating a dead horse theme? Evidently not, because I (and I'm pretty convinced you) face it head on every day. I recently read that every person despairs one hundred times a day. That's why I wish to cheer on the whole world every day. No one is exempt from being targeted by repetitive bummeristic moments.
Circumstances tend to extract the wind from our sails day by day. So do some people. Uggh! Staying on top of our day with strong emotional health is seriously challenging. And we can do it. Too many cave. I want to do what I can to build rather than dismantle. There is constant hope regardless of the size of a problem or the clamoring of an opposing person.
Recently a comment was said to me that flattened me. It was regarding my work and how I just don't see how ineffective it is. Such was spoken with firm conviction. It hurt my one feeling that I had left. But, I needed this because it shoved me back into that treacherous space where we all live...a hundred times a day. I can't be of much help to the frail and injured if I only know insult and suffering by reading a book of how another(s) experienced it. No, if I'm going to meaningfully grasp the swirling challenges facing you and your turbulent world, I have to experience repeated moments of angst.
And so do you....if you are going to truly live as encouragement to those around you. Hard times hit so that we can understand others when their hard times hit. Nothing frustrating or aggravating is ever a waste.
So one more time I was faced with soaking/bathing in the insult. Every time I have to determine to let such arrows (and many do come our way) bless me rather than slay me. In such moments I am once again challenged to think on the things going right. I know...I preach this all of the time...because hurt continues to spread like thistles. Yet, we are allowed to transform these times to serve us rather than destroy us. Opposing winds simply call for resetting of the sails in order to successfully continue toward our destination.
The next time you would like to get down on a person I would ask you to wonder if possibly such a one has taken a significant series of hits themselves over time. I'm saying they have. Even our critics have had a seriously rough go of it. This calls for our sympathy; not our resentment and surely not our rebellion. We live among a wounded humanity. Regardless of social status, all individuals at every level encounter the darts and arrows of devastating comments. It is a routine way of a fundamentally thoughtless life.
What we want to do is twofold; (1) we want to live in sympathy for the ones doing the injuring for these have been dreadfully hurt, and (2) we must be determined to shift from personal resentment to loving understanding. Jesus came to earth to be intentionally hurt so that he could have a true feel for what it was like to be something that he and Father and Spirit had never known; what it was like to be a created (but fallen) timid, injured human being. Jesus became flesh to walk through the flesh highs and the flesh lows. He. Gets. Us.
How do we win over discouragement? We realize that even our bad days are designed to help us have favorable and positive impact on the next person around us who is having a similarly gnarly-bad-ugly-awful day. Even our enemies will win if we can remember why we are called to really live; to offer them an entirely new and heaven-oriented perspective as to how to walk on this earth.
It is here--in our determined hearts--that the battle is victorious over discouragement. We are to care more about the welfare of another than we are about how we are feeling.
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