One of my refocus points of this year is to make this blog space more than just sharing the things… Don’t get me wrong, I will still SHARE THE THINGS ;-) but this kind of post is going to become more common so I hope you’re here for it.
Yesterday I woke up late and rushed to get Bailey. I was already too late and had a mess to clean up in his crate. Poor buddy. I felt so bad! I took him downstairs and put him on the floor so I could put on my jacket before going out in the rain. Rookie move. As soon as I got one arm in, he skeedaddled his little self on over to my BRAND NEW WHITE RUG and squatted down… you can guess what happened next.
I slow motion ran my one arm jacketed self over while saying noooooooooo but it was for sure too late. He looked at me with panicked eyes and I picked him up and took him outside.
After a very short trip outside (most of his business had already been previously conducted, after all), I put him down to eat his breakfast and I went to clean the stain out of the rug. Thankfully Folex got it right now. Blessings and AMEN.
But as I was scrubbing the brown stain out of the rug, I had this thought: “What if I just saw the mess and instead of cleaning it up, I rolled up the rug and tossed it”?
That would be silly, not to mention Matt would probably murder me.
BUT…..
That’s what we do with our lives sometimes. A mess of one form or another gets made and our first thought is “Ugh, this is such a bad day.” One of my favorite phrases is that bad moments don’t make bad days. Bad moments are going to happen but just like the stained rug, we can respond by taking a minute, cleaning up the remains, and going on our merry way.
The trouble that most of us have is that we just want to sit in the mess and stare at it. Allowing messes all day long to steal our joy. It’s ok to work through the mess, in fact, it’s super healthy to do that.
Take your time processing through the moments that bring you down so you can work through them then WALK through them. You gotta keep going, sister.
I like to remind myself to put a parenthesis around bad moments and an exclamation mark at the end of the good.
Life is all about perspective and we’ve been given this GREAT power to choose our response, but most of us rarely tap into that. We walk around like helpless victims of our circumstances, but we are not that.
Don’t give away your joy just because it’s surrounded by a mess. There’s beauty even in the mess, sweet friend. You just gotta find it.
So for the sake of all that’s good, don’t let a little mess cause you to throw away the whole rug. Don’t let a little moment throw away the whole day.
Here’s a verse that I think pulls it all together:
“I have learned the secret of being content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or want. I can do ALL THINGS through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:12-13