Every one of us wants to live a full and fun life; everything safe and secure. We plan things how we think they should nicely flow. But life does not take orders from us. Winds of life play tunes that disrupt rhythms we set. We fall, we hurt, we lose people and things dear to us. We grumble and struggle with winds that are messing up our plans – a lost battle. We want to preserve our preferred pattern, save what we have, all of which the wind is threatening to snatch away. The harder we try, the messier the results. “But I do not want to lose!” “… why me?” “I want it this way!” “I want it right now,” we sulk not realizing how much like a child our lyrics sound against maturing tunes of life. We get discouraged and frustrated because things are not going our way.
Emotions build up and pile high in the process and unhealthy results of disappointment are pain, anger, and dismay. Without meaning to, we take unpleasant turn of events personal: too personal. All we see is how everyone, everything including ourselves, have failed us. Thoughts or sights of our failure to get things work our way land us in anxiety, depression, panic, and progressive distress. Tense situations sit on our nerves, rubbing hard and fast, wearing them thin. We lose our cool over small stuff. Minor upsets we could have ridden well under normal circumstances blow out and end up in crises, explosions that leave more mess behind.
Consciously or unconsciously, we have allowed ourselves to be stressed and strained by things we could not control. Instead of riding the wind, our insistence that life bows to us, and our refusal to accept what we cannot change and focus on those we can, engenders such tension that distresses us and others. Without realizing it, we are opening doors we should not for monsters to walk in and the result is just as it is when a wild wind passes. Our stubbornness does not help the situation, ourselves, or others. No matter how powerful and influential we convince ourselves that we are, we must accept that there are things we cannot control: winds of life is one of them.
The wind blows as it wills and we lose when we fight it. We cannot regulate things beyond our control. We do not have to figure out things we cannot fix. Instead, we should locate that position of peace in the storm and wait it out. Doubting, accusing, and questioning God amid our distress yield no profit at all. Allowing His peace to keep us still when all around is falling apart can be tough but it is the best route to safety and stability. That peace is my gauge for determining when I am in His will, when I am tilting, derailing, or completely distracted. Being in God’s will does not exonerate us from challenges. God’s peace cannot be gauged by absence of troubles. We have peace because we keep our focus on God instead of our problems.
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Isiah 26:3.
Excerpts from Riding Monsters, Dr Glory C. Odemene, amazon.com