Usually when something bad happens my whole day will be ruined. I get cut off by a Toyota who thinks they own the road and suddenly I feel like the world is against me. My professor tells me I have to write a 10 page single-spaced paper comparing and contrasting the dynamic of the spiritual relationship between Dracula and Mina Harker and immediately I imagine the professor is only out to destroy my life. I try to pet a cat and it runs from me…please just give me my bed, the day is over with.
For most of my life I haven’t “embraced the suck.” The only days I’m truly happy is when everything is going right. When does anything ever go completely right? Before I left for the Race I imagined that every day would be a crazy, over the top spiritual high. I would be walking around blessing everyone while walking on a ray of sunshine. This is not true, and not only is it not true it also wouldn’t be ideal at all.
When I first arrived in Thailand I was overwhelmed by its beauty. The misty green hills loll lazily in every direction you look. Palm trees wave in gentle breezes and the Thai people are always quick to offer a grin and a wave. I was on a spiritual and emotional high. Then the work started. The merciless sun beat down upon our ever reddening shoulders and necks. The 90 degree heat felt more like 234 degrees with the humidity factored in. At times I felt like all the humidity in the air was coming from my sweat drenched self. Taking a wheel barrow full of gravel from the seemingly never ending gravel pile to dump it in a hole that never seemed to fill started feeling like torture devised during Medieval times.
Then God opened my negative eyes and my complaining heart. He did this in the form of a book called Love Does. In the book author Bob Goff talks about living in each and every moment God grants us, even the ones that suck. Every breath and second we live is given to us by God. There is no other reason we keep on filling our lungs with air.
This is something that is so ridiculously hard for me. Even from a young age I was always looking forward to the next thing even if we were doing something fun right then. So I simply prayed and asked God for healing from a discontent heart. The next day everything changed.
I was put to work that morning in a huge garden that the groundskeeper of the Remember Nhu girl’s home, Bud, was making to help feed the kids. We hoed dirt then hoed some more. We pulled weeds then the jungle sprouted up another in its place. We cleared overgrowing brush and vines as termites and ants crawled all over our feet and a snake slithered away. But through all of this “suck” God had given me a spirit of joy and contentment. From one day to the next my heart had completely changed.
Ever since I prayed that prayer God has revealed His beauty and love in every good moment and especially every perceived bad moment. What I’m learning is that there are never bad moments when you’re following God; there are only great moments and even greater moments. God’s fingerprint is on everything, even the guy who cuts you off on the road. If you choose love and joy then suddenly you find yourself loving that man who just “wronged” you. That heart of discontent and feeling like everything is against you will not rear its ugly head again.
So whether you are going on the Race soon yourself, on the Race now, or just going about everyday life, remember to embrace the suck. God has so much to teach you and show you. If you look at life that way then every single bad and good day suddenly becomes more beautiful than the last and you will see God at work in absolutely everything.
“Every day God invites us on the same kind of adventure. It’s not a trip where He sends us a rigid itinerary, He simply invites us. God asks what it is He’s made us to love, what it is that captures our attention, what feeds that deep indescribable need of our souls to experience the richness of the world He made. And then, leaning over us, He whispers, “Let’s go do that together.” Bob Goff
