Sunday Morning - “Tested”
Happy Sunday!
Most Sundays I know what the message will be; a moment that has affected me and one I feel, or hope, will change the perspective of at least one person. There is a definite beginning, middle and end. The moral of the story is clear and determined. But as in life, sometimes things are not as clear as we may want them to be. There is not always a beginning, middle and an end that gives you the light at the end of the tunnel.
Two weeks ago, my message was entitled “Tagged and Tested”. This message is the continuation of that. The young man suspected of tagging my jeep was a 17-year-old who lived with his mother and younger brother. The next day the family was served a 30-day notice and the next week the 17-year-old went to court where he was sentenced 45 days in juvenile detention.
It took until the next day for me to find peace, forgiveness and clarity about what had transpired, but I did it. Clarity, a story to share with others and a Sunday Morning message were the rewards of my effort. I then found a product that helped decrease the adverse affects of the paint on my jeep door, which the most difficult to remove. So, I had passed the test, was patient until the rewards came and onward and upward – right? Well, at least that’s what I thought until this past Thursday evening when my wife’s car was spray-painted. I was so mad. I felt ten times the anger and wanted revenge ten times as much as when it happened to my jeep. My wife, two neighbors and myself were cleaning off the spray paint until 1:00 am in the morning. Afterwards my wife and I went to bed. I had a very difficult time calming down. I could not fit anything positive in my head. I could not see a silver lining, a moral to the story or a wonderful way to phrase a Sunday Morning message from this moment. I was up most of the night. The next morning I woke up with the same bad feeling; knowing once again we were the victims of evil, once again no justice would be served and what I was feeling was not healthy for me.
An analogy I have used in the past is: Say we have two balloons in our mind. One is filled with good positive thoughts and feelings and the second is filled with bad, negative thoughts and feelings. We cannot always simply eliminate the bad we are feeling or experiencing; we cannot simply deflate the feel bad balloon. But what we can do is our best to fill up the feel good balloon. Thus, simultaneously deflating the feel bad one since there is only so much room in our minds.
After my wife awoke, we decided that we would spend the day together, doing our best to fill up the feel good balloons. We spent the day at the movies and then we went to dinner. All day we shared, laughed, thanked God for our blessings and enjoyed each other. What we accomplished was filling up our feel good balloons, while simultaneously, taking air out of the feel bad balloon. We knew we were blessed. We knew that what they had done to our cars was to our cars and not to us. We knew we had to focus on our good, be thankful in all circumstances and stay there; mentally, emotionally and spiritually as long as we needed to, to feel better and we did.
There was not an easy choice, a path of clarity to see, there was not a nice neat answer, and there was not a cool little lesson to be learned. What I had to re-learn is that life is sometimes unfair and sometimes things just happen. What is important is how one deals with what happens in life, along one’s path. Sometimes all we can do in a test is to choose our thoughts and actions.
peace & God bless
tjd
