Hijack Post--Dinner Guest

I had this really long post about a study that I'm a part of but that can wait. Tonight we had a guest over, a friend who has had a really difficult/challenging year and a half. We didn't invite them over to give us the details.. simply to get to know them better and have an enjoyable evening. But in our conversation one thing was shared that just blew me away. And it just wasn't the words that hit me... it was the attitude behind it. I was (and still am) in awe of the faith and trust in God that this person has despite what they've been through and it really challenged me to take a different perspective on the difficulties that I deal with.

They said, 'You know we all go through difficult times and I would have never chosen this to happen but if this had not happened I would have never learned the lessons I have learned over the past year. There's just no way I could imagine that I would have learned these lessons outside of this situation.' And they were grateful for these lessons.

It made me think about how I view challenging situations, how I tend to whine and gripe about them, think nobody else has dealt with something like this, think they're so much worse than what anyone else has to deal with... But in reality, I'm blessed to not have had any serious/major challenges to deal with and the mere things I view as challenging are really little incidents that eventually get dealt with and in some cases could have been prevented by myself to begin with. Perspecitive right? I can get all down and play the 'victim' but what does that ultimately do? Nothing. So why not take the opportunity to learn a lesson and grow for the better? They really challenged me to LOOK for opportunities to grow and learn instead of whine and gripe even in the little challenges and to be grateful that I haven't had any major issues to deal with.

I hope I'm making sense. I know exactly what I want to say but the words are not coming out smoothly. LOL I guess they just helped me to realize that there will be things that God wants us to learn and sometimes the only way for us to learn these lessons is through a challenge/difficult time... (it doesn't always have to be a major incident but those do occur as well) so in all situations I need to be sensitive to God and what He is trying to teach me instead of getting the 'poor me' syndrome. Not only will I gain a better attitude and handle these things easier (well that's the idea anyway...lol) but I won't bring others down and drive people nuts by my complaining.

So anyway... I'm just very thankful for our guest this evening. In the sharing of their heart... they touched another.