Better Life, the Hard Way

When the going gets tough, we grow.

Interesting how the richest times in Holy Scripture aren't the times when the big miracle comes, but the times leading up to it.

The time after the miracle is what I call the big sigh of relief moment [BSORM], the place where we set foot safely on the opposite side of a swollen river, check to make sure we’re still in one piece (grin appreciatively), and start off again.

The time before the miracle [TBTM] is where we’re stuck or hurt or blind or lost. It’s where all the windows become doors and the doors become walls. The place where life isn’t working, or it is,… but not the way we want it to.

Everybody loves the BSORM; it's a happy ending of sorts. It’s a place we all want to get to (and stay as long as possible). Whereas nobody willingly enters the “crappy life” tunnel. Although it seems we all have to visit there at some point.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Scripture teaches us that when people get chewed up by the mill of life and pray to God to deliver them, that they get what they pray for,… eventually.

God always comes through, but usually only after He either adds something on or takes something else away. Meanwhile these trials & turbulations, sown into hard ground and watered by our bitter tears, these times almost always become the hallmark turning points in our trajectory, where (often unknown to us and with the help of the Holy Spirit) we re-calibrate our aim and make it “true.”  

You know you’re in the TBTM because it feels like the end.

Trust, don't be afraid. It’s really ABNB— code for, A Brand New Beginning.