Pump It Up! Live Elated, Not Deflated Through Disappointing Daysනියැදිය

Plain Sailing?

Happily ever after, you might say - I got what I’d been praying about for so long. God answered, directed, and provided a job that worked for our family, in an area of work I was passionate about, and I was able to further develop my signing skills. But if I’m completely honest, although I was super thankful to God for steering my little dinghy into new waters, my adventure onboard the speedboat opened up many different challenges - complete with pirates a plenty to deal with.

You may be rolling your eyes, thinking, how dare she complain after God gave her what she’d been praying for. I’m not complaining, but I want to acknowledge that even when we see prayers answered and dreams fulfilled, we have never ‘arrived’ so to speak. I went from feeling a bit bored to feeling like there were not enough hours in the day. I went from ending in a job where I had felt competent and surrounded by people who liked me, to a whole new sea of faces who didn’t yet really know or like me. The people I worked with were all much more advanced in signing than I was - that’s not me being humble, it’s just the truth. I felt like I was communicating like an incompetent mime artist rather than a person with a good standard of sign language!

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, really, those pesky pirates started to get in my face again. The ‘embarrassment’ pirate regularly told me I was not good enough for the job, that my signing wasn’t up to scratch, and that I wouldn’t make a difference there.

Even when things go in our favour and God answers our prayers, they aren’t without difficulty. None of us really experiences plain sailing in life, and if we do, it doesn’t tend to last very long. This is not to be negative, I say this to highlight how important these dinghy days lessons are. We really need to learn how to do life well despite the many storms and choppy waters we traverse through. As our scripture today teaches us, God is with us through the various waters and rivers of life and always protects us. We need to grow in strength through these challenges, which leads me nicely onto the theme for tomorrow, where you’ll need to show a bit of leg - ooohhh!

Reflection

Have you found it to be true in your own life that when God answers and blesses you, it’s often a fresh set of pirates to contend with, rather than life becoming plain sailing?!