Where Is Your Faith?

Do you ever find yourself facing one of those ‘frustrating’ days. The kind that make you feel overwhelmed, antsy, and agitated? You’re not alone. Many people feel this way at some point. It doesn’t mean it’s entirely your fault or often can’t even be avoided. Sometimes you just have days when you feel like the stars aren’t aligned. Your day can start out by spilling coffee on your blouse or having someone cut you off in traffic. You may get a deadline unexpectedly moved up at work or have an unpleasant confrontation with a stranger. Sometimes these things just happen, but hopefully not too often.

 

When you find yourself facing a day like that what’s your first response? To become defensive? To become angry? To try to fix everything (which I find can be the most exhausting)?

Every once in a while I face a day like this. I guess that just makes me normal. I’m fortunate though to have some great people around me for support; my family, my friends, and my co-workers. I’ll be honest and say that sometimes the little things can frustrate me as much as the big things. It’s my nature to play the peacekeeper, to want be able to re-align the stars, and to get everything and everyone back to running smoothly. Truth be told if I could really manage to accomplish all that I’d be giving myself WAY too much credit.

I need to accept that there are things out of my control (ok … MANY things). Everything is in God’s hands. Maybe He is presenting me with a frustrating day now and then to teach me something. To teach me to be more understanding, or to have more patience, or to turn some of my stress over to Him. I’ve always had a hard time doing that. It’s not that I don’t have faith, because I do. I think it’s because I was raised to try to be self-sufficient and independent. For me to stand back and ‘turn it over to God’, in my mind, makes me think I’m taking the easy way out – that I’m not doing my share and am standing back waiting for Him to take care of my life for me. In my heart I know that isn’t the case; I should be asking God for support and accomplish my tasks and tackle my stresses with Him by my side, BUT my head tells me to keep trying to handle everything myself. Absurd, I know.  So right after I master re-aligning the stars I’ll get started on figuring out how to align my heart and my mind.

Any suggestions? How do you handle your frustrating days?