Sunday Morning - “Identify your cross”
I hope this finds you & yours having a safe & blessed Memorial Day weekend. :-)
A guy I knew moved to another country to be with his girl & get married. There was good & bad, exciting & challenging times. Moral to the story is he got married in another country to his best friend, not much bad in that. A year later he still couldn’t find steady work, he was still struggling adapting to his 3rd language on a daily basis, living in a very small place & being newly married grew on him, their marriage, stress & health. A year & half after moving there they moved to the states. They wanted simple. They wanted peace. But they needed money to do that, security, & good jobs.
Within 6 months of moving back to his rural hometown where family helped them both get comfortable, one thing he was truly missing, him & his wife got jobs, rented a house, got 2 cars, a dog & a cat. The security & money they wanted. Life was good. A year later they were doing the same thing & starting to question what they had done. They worked a lot & didn’t get much time to spend together. Plus, all of the stuff from his past that he moved away from was still there. Both their jobs were unrewarding & demanding. They enjoyed the little time together with their animals doing simple things, while speaking of & missing Europe. They could live anywhere & do anything they thought. They decided that they were bored & young & that they would move back to Europe, get jobs & travel. They were both focused on the task at hand & how the family would look upon this bold move. They had found strength in each other & through their choices learned to know what they truly wanted & needed to be happy. They ended up moving back, not far from where they had lived just 2 years earlier. They got a great home to rent, shipped a lot of their stuff, animals & furniture with them & within 6 months they were settled on jobs, routines & enjoying being past the last few years of their lives. He was making more money & working fewer hours than he had ever before in his life. They had seemed to reach a new level. They wanted simple, & knew how to find it. They got what they asked for, along with peace & where & how they wanted to live.
A year later his wife was transferred to another location & missed her co-workers. He was promoted rapidly due to his vast experience in the work force & the need in which this company had. But with that came responsibility, stress & the discovery that his boss is the half empty guy, half the time & he never knows which. The test is becoming insurmountable. He was overwhelmed & seeking answers.
I shared this…
There will always be something; a test, your cross, a challenge or test. Call it what you may. You will have one. We will all have one, some more, embrace yours, it is yours. I probably know someone who has a cross that you would not want to trade with. Trust me. The key is to identify it as quickly as you can. Once you do that test will be over. Then you can do your best to enjoy that which you have & live a great life. Or you can fight the cross He chose for you. Scream why it shouldn’t be yours, not now. Put all your energy into that, life is about choices, go ahead. You will not get very far though, except for drained mentally, emotionally & spiritually. If that is what your goal is, then… congrats..?
If not then identify your cross, your test. Embrace it. Do your best & if you fail, completely have faith & the belief it wasn’t meant to be & that you will grow from it, learn a lesson from it or avoid a worse scenario, one that you could not have foreseen nor predicted. Thank Him for each day you have above ground. Pray He does not give you someone else’s cross to carry & humbly embrace & carry yours.
- tjd
