How will you choose to weather the storm?
Do you ever have those days when you are fed up with life’s frustrations that keep adding up, one by one?
Like a tree lying across your driveway after last night’s storm? Your kid still lying in bed when you need to leave in 15 minutes? Your three-years-new car with the engine light that keeps illuminating on your display, even though the dealer has “fixed” it four times and assured you that the problem is resolved?
I was having one of those days not too long ago. My saving grace was a perfectly timed phone call from my best friend.
She listened as I recounted my morning in all its inconvenient detail—then summed it up in frustration: “Why can’t my life be normal?”
Her response was unexpected but full of truth. “Your life is normal.”
My life felt anything but normal. In my small world, normal meant schedules and routines.
I don’t know when I started equating normal with an unproblematic day, but in the moment of our conversation, an unproblematic day is exactly what I wanted.
Life is full of uncertainties and circumstances beyond my control. I just don’t like uncertainty. It is easier for me to imagine a picturesque ideal of order, happiness, and balance that I define as “normal.”
Life’s chaos and problems force me outside of my carefully defined boundaries protected by my schedules and routines—schedules and routines that I create to avoid problems.
But problems are inevitable, just like rainstorms every now and then.
I, however, get to choose how I respond to them.
I can run from them, stand around and whine about them, or face them head on.
If I choose to walk through life’s storms, I may learn something—something like patience, stamina, perseverance, and faith.
I can’t avoid all the events I will face in life with my carefully planned schedules and routines; life’s problems are certain to come. But if I am patient and continue to persevere, another normal day will surely return.
As for all those abnormal days in-between, I get to choose how I am going to weather the storm.
