Tired of Taking the High Road

  • by Trish Berg
  • April 9, 2014
  • 395
                        
Struggling with loads of laundry, clutter in the kitchen and chaos in your life? Stress can easily steal our joy. Trish Berg reminds us to simplify the small stuff and find Joy in the Journey. Do you ever get tired of taking the high road? I do. Aren’t you tired of being kind, forgiving and grace-filled in a world full of people who sometimes seem to be mean-grudge-bearing grumps? Me, too! I will just apologize at the outset of this column, as it will probably not be filled with joy and happiness. In fact, it might just be fodder for me to air my personal grievances, and boy oh boy do I have plenty of those! So don’t go looking for the rainbow after the flood here. Don’t seek out the happy ending tied with the pretty red ribbon like a package on Christmas morning. You just won’t find it here. Not this week. Not in this column. Last week was a lousy week for me. The who, what and why really don’t matter that much. Just assume it was a bad week that got worse as the days went on. I am sure many of you have been here. I am sure, without a doubt, that many of you reading this are shouting “AMEN” at the top of your lungs because you have been wronged in some way by people in your life or career. I guess we all have to a certain extent. To be honest, it would really be easy to allow myself to embrace bitterness, anger and frustration. Like giving those emotions a great big bear-hug, I could pull them in tight and hold on to those negative feelings. I could ruminate on how I have been wronged and how life is just not fair. In fact, I could probably write a novel on the topic, if I only had the time. To be even more honest, I did hug that bear, for a little while, anyway. It sort of felt good to allow myself the freedom to get angry. But suddenly I realized that the bear I was hugging was beginning to claw and bite at me. In fact, holding on to those negative feelings was only hurting myself. That is when I heard this saying which hit very close to home for me: “God will not protect us from what He will perfect us through.” So I am choosing to embrace trust and hope in God’s plan for my life. I wish I could offer you a happy ending with a red ribbon tied on top like a package on Christmas morning, but life is more complicated than that and I really don’t have any happy ending here. What I can offer you is trust and hope. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us that God has a plan for our lives, a hope and a future. I guess I forgot, or chose to forget that for a while. Our hope does not come from our circumstances, whatever they are. True hope doesn’t change with the tide of good fortune. True hope comes from within our hearts and is rooted in trusting the One who created us, the One who loves us – the One who leads us. I guess even though I may be tired of taking the high road….the high road is not tired of taking me where I need to go.


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