Sometimes life is rough.
Nothing seems to go right, and every aspect of your life seems freakishly in agreement to just go wrong.
Maybe it’s because of your own faults, bad decisions, or lack of skill in a certain area, or maybe it’s just a bad day (or week) (or month) (or even your year).
Friends theme song, anybody?
Anyway, whatever the reason, a rapid-fire succession of massive mess-ups and frustrating failures (both real and perceived) is discouraging and exhausting.
How are you supposed to get out of the endless cycle of doing stupid stuff and then hating yourself for it, which then causes you to do more stupid stuff?
Today I got in my car after an 11 hour shift at work and opened my podcast app—exhaustedly resigned to listening to another long talk about art and government.
All of a sudden, though, it hit me—this is a new week! (It’s halfway through the new week, actually, but sometimes major revelations take a little bit of time to develop okay.) Either way—I get to read stuff this week! And it’s interesting stuff! No more hard-to-listen-to-because-my-car’s-bluetooth-connection-is-lacking-somewhat podcasts!
That’s a victory!
And then I realized that I could listen to music. Completely guilt-free music, because I had no more required listening to complete!
(Not that I don’t appreciate podcasts; on the contrary—I love them and their ability to transform commute time into something truly valuable. But sometimes I just like listening to some good happy music. And it’s significantly less happy when there’s guilt mixed in there.)
So I listened to some good old guilt-free music with my windows down and truly absorbed springtime in Minnesota.
That’s a victory.
And then I got a very large, very sugary, very expensive coffee for FREE because something inside reminded me that I needed to use up my free drink coupon before it expired—which would’ve been the end of the day today, apparently. Close call, much?
THAT is a victory.
And then I took the scenic route home through the countryside of rural Minnesota, and it just so happened to happen exactly during golden hour. Has there ever been a more beautiful sight than the richness of the deep, earthy-brown fields contrasted against the fresh, vibrant, baby green grass—during golden hour? I submit that there has not.
That is a dang victory.
Guilt-free happy music, guilt-free specialty coffee, the beauty of creation.
This is probably just an example of having an attitude of gratitude, but right now, in this season of everything seeming to be a fail, they’re really presenting themselves as little victories.
I’m tempted to feel like maybe this is The Lord saying that He’s still there, and He’s still good, and maybe He cares enough to remind me about my free coffee. Maybe that’s frivolous and undermining the glory and reverence and awe-inspiring nature of God. But maybe it’s just showing that if He cares enough to feed the sparrows and clothe the flowers, maybe He cares enough to take care of me in the little ways that I don’t expect. And if He’s willing to take care of me in the little things, how much more would He be willing to take care of me in the big things? Or maybe that’s blasphemy.
Or—maybe that’s how He speaks when my brain is too full of crap to listen any other way.
As if that wasn’t enough confirmation, listen to this.
My “april” playlist was playing in the background as I was writing this post. At some point, the playlist ended and Spotify switched into radio mode. At exactly the point when I was writing that last sentence, my ears suddenly started actually hearing what was playing, and it was the middle of this random song that I’ve never heard, and it absolutely destroyed me.
Listen to the song. Read the lyrics. Think about what time of the year we’re in.
There’s a lot here.
It’s going to take me awhile to process.
This blog post is a little on the personal side (and I’m pretty much always already too far over into the personal side, oops), so sorry about that.
I don’t really have a point anymore. I had one when I started, but a lot has happened since then.
God is good, real, and intentional. Celebrate the little victories (even when they’re not your own). Don’t worry about tomorrow.
Have a good night.