When I was twenty years old, I was newly married and a new mother. We barely made $30K a year together and we were young and dumb, but we survived! We were in our second rental in as many years with just a few dollars to our name, but we survived! We could barely buy formula for the baby but we survived! 800 sq ft, 3 bedroom, 1 bath house with roaches inhabiting the counters as if they were snow flakes atop Mount Everest, but we survived!
Not only did we survive, but we lived to reach goals, make mistakes, learn from them, take steps forward, take a few steps back, and then forward again. My ex-husband and I may not be together anymore but we sure reminisce on those years we spent “surviving” with fondness. That tiny house with ripped floors and holes in the walls. That 1 bedroom apartment we shared with 2 other adults and 4 kids. Those “fixer-upper” trucks that backfired so loudly that we parked blocks away from our destination so no one would see what we pulled up in. They weren’t then but they really ARE fond memories today!
Fast forward a few years. New husband, another baby, and a bank account that stayed closer to ONE figure than it ever did more than such! But guess what, we survived! Life had so many twists and turns and surprised us through every one! And we survived! And we appreciated them!
Fast forward some more…and repeat…
Zechariah 4:10 says, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…”.
Life is always going to change. There will always be struggles of some sort. Whether it be financial, relational, emotional, etc….there will always be something! There will always be met goals mixed in with small beginnings. We should always be learning, growing, and seeking out what God’s got in store for us! When you reach a goal, it doesn’t mean stop! It means keep going! It means, let’s keep doing what God told us to do last time until we hear from Him what to do next! And take joy in that! If you’re standing still, you’re going backwards right?! If you’re unhappy, seek what makes you happy and start working towards that. Yes, even if it means starting over!
We always feel, at some point, with some area of our life, that we are not progressing as quickly as we feel that we should. Or we are not as far towards our goal as we had hoped. Or that we have spent way too much time and effort reaching someone else’s goals…goals that we never had for ourselves in jobs that we never wanted in the first place. That’s called circumstantial employment….if in your circumstance, that’s the job that made the most sense at the time but isn’t anywhere close to what you want to be doing….start working towards changing that. Don’t go bankrupt by quitting tomorrow…but start working towards the you that you always wanted to be. Don’t waste any more time making the best of your worst….instead, how about you work toward the best of your best!
Bye for now,
RR
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