Making it through the storms of life…or when it snows in September

It snowed here yesterday.  

Yes.  I just said it snowed here yesterday.  Yes, yes, it is only mid-September.  Yes, I know it doesn’t normally snow in September.

No.  It didn’t stay very long.  But it still snowed here yesterday.

{Seriously people!  It snowed here yesterday!!}

Now, we’re going to talk about making it through tough times.

“Hi.  My name is Mitzi and it snowed here yesterday, and I’m having a bad day.”

Ok, now that I’ve got THAT out of my system…

Yeah, it was quite the bummer when I looked out my window and saw…whaaaa???  Is that snow?!  You’ve got to be kidding me!!  And it kept falling.  More and more.  Heavier and heavier.  Then it started to cover the ground and housetops.  Ugh.  (And no, I didn’t post a picture of the snow…well, because I didn’t want everyone replying back about their sunny, beautiful, warm day they were having.  And yes.  I’m bitter.  Now I’m going to go pray and get my heart right with God so I can finish this blog post…)

We all have “bad days.”  Days when things go wrong (like…it snows in September).  Or the car won’t start.  Your zipper breaks.  A flat tire on the way to work.  A fight with your spouse.  An unexpected bill comes in the mail…or a camera speeding ticket (don’t ask me how I know about this, sheesh).  Your dog pees on the freshly cleaned floor (because they don’t pee on dirty floors), and you’ve got company coming in 5 minutes.  Or you unexpectedly have to spend hours in the ER waiting room, an unwilling spectator to the unsightly “show.”  On and on it goes.

Bad days.  They come.  They go.  You get through them.

Clouds roll in one day and most of the time they roll out the next day.  But what do you do when those clouds roll in…and they stay?  You find you’re not just ticking days off the calendar, but months.  Sometimes years.

Chronic illness.  Or a terminal illness.  Taking care of aging parents, or someone chronically ill.  Maybe it’s a yucky stretch in our life that doesn’t appear to be making any plans to be leaving anytime soon. Financial problems bigger than Mt. Everest.  Ongoing family upheaval.  The loss of a job turns your whole world upside-down.  Maybe you’re having hormonal upheaval that brings far more questions than answers. (Menopause anyone??  I see that hand!  Evasive little stinkers, those hormones.  One day you think you’ve got them figured out…what “triggers” a bad spell…and they change again.  Please don’t ask how I know about that too.  sigh)

So the bad days come.  And they stay.

Now what?

First of all, there are three things you should never (ever) do when you find yourself in a dark, hard time in your life:

1 – Never quit reading your Bible.

2 – Never quit talking to God.

3 – Never quit going to church.

Never.  Ever.

I think its safe to say that most everyone has times when they just want to quit.  It’s just too hard and it would be so easy to roll over and die (not literally, mind you…you know what I mean 😉 ).  You’re pushing against the wind and its exhausting.  Kind of like treading peanut butter.  You feel like you’re getting nowhere.

So you quit.

Ok.  And that helped…????

I personally know people who have quit, and you know my first observation?  They certainly aren’t happier.  Mind you, they may fake “happier” (“look at me, I’m having a great time living for myself!!“), but it’s clear in God’s Word that the way of transgressors is hard and there is only pleasure in sin for a season.  Some have a longer season of “fun” in their sin, but it will come to an end.  That’s a promise.  A promise from a holy God, that never breaks His promises.

It boggles my mind how some folks, as soon as a rough spell comes into their life, their first reaction is to quit.  They quit coming to church, they quit reading their Bible, they quit praying.  They turn their back on the only One that can truly help them.

And I repeat myself – And that helped…???

Now, I can’t say I’ve never wanted to quit.  The devil sure comes around to discourage me.  Often.   There are times when my brain gets in such a muddle and I can’t think straight and sometimes it takes a while before I recognize smutty-face’s voice and realize how defeated he’s gotten me.   That’s when I have to start encouraging myself and remembering the many truth’s of God.  I have to turn to His Word.  And believe it.

The Bible tells us in I Samuel 30 that David encouraged himself.  All hell was breaking loose in his life and everyone and everything was against him and what does he do? He encourages himself.

I believe that “knee-jerk” reaction of David’s goes back to when he spent time alone in the fields, taking care of the family sheep.  Protecting them from the enemy.  Obviously he drew many life-lessons from those days.  We have the beloved Psalm 23, and so many more, to prove it.

Perhaps he encouraged himself by remembering how God helped him kill Goliath, with a simple stone and sling.  Or remembering the times he was running from King Saul and how God protected him again and again.  He definitely had his share of hard times, but he weathered each storm by staying close to his Shepherd.  And perhaps he learned that lesson because he knew how much safer his flock would be in a storm if they stayed close to their shepherd…

Honestly, we can do the same thing.  Whether it’s God sending someone to help change your flat tire, or having your company run late so you can clean up the doggy mess, we can all look back and encourage ourselves by remembering the many times God was there in our bad days.

Or maybe you can look back to your darkest times, those prolonged, “never gonna end” days…or years, and see how God carried you the whole way.  How He sent someone to encourage you.  How He encouraged you through His Word, or the preaching at church, when everything around you was falling apart.  How He gave you the strength to pick up that small stone and kill that “giant” that was out to kill you.

I have so many stories I will one day share with you, about when our son Benjamin was sick with cancer.  Good stories.  God stories.  Stories of how He paid bills ($250,000 worth of bills in the 90’s).  Stories of how soft God made that whole journey, as hard as it was.  Amazing “God” things, that when I look back and remember, I can encourage myself like David did.

Today, as Joe and I were in town running a few errands, I took my notebook and starting jotting a bunch of thoughts down, with this post in mind.  I took the notebook into where we were grabbing a quick bite to eat, and I continued to write.  Its weird, though.  Most of those jotted down thoughts didn’t even make it into this post.  But I believe God used those few simple thoughts to jumpstart me in the direction He wanted this post to go.  Maybe only one person needed these few simple reminders. Maybe I needed these simple reminders.

So, how are you doing today, my friends?  How goes your journey?  Is your way dark and dreary?  Does the powerful, stormy winds have you thinking about quitting?  Let me encourage you to put your head down (in prayer!) and push into the wind, with a determination to get through this storm too.   And always, always stay close to the Shepherd.

I’m here cheering you on…but most importantly, God is too.