Learning to Be Okay When Life’s Messed Up

What is life? What is living? I mean, what is truly living? 

We go through life, living, breathing, and eating. We face struggles and trials. On many days, they seem never ending. Sometimes we push through these things. Sometimes we fall under these things. But we get back up again. We keep going, because we know that life is more than just hardships. We have good, peaceful times too. Wonderful, amazing, and beautiful moments sprinkled throughout our life. Those moments are what make this whole life thing worth it. Or so we think.

But is that all life is? Isn’t there something more to this life than struggles and good times? Is that really all that there is?

I don’t think so. Even though life in many ways seems like roll coaster going up and down and up and down, I don’t think that it’s really meant to be that way. Yes, life has its down times. But I think that even in those down times we can find joy and satisfaction.

Those times of hardships, are just as much a part of life as those times of peace. Those struggles and trials aren’t meant to be hopeless. They shouldn’t be. With God on our side, even in those hard times we should be able to find joy and satisfaction.

You don’t have to be happy. You can’t expect to be happy all the time. God mentions plenty of times where we should mourn and cry. Many times He talks of the pains that we will have to bear in this life. Our lives aren’t meant to be all the time happiness.

But what I am saying is that you can find joy and satisfaction in your circumstances. You can find that God given peace that the way life is right now, messed up and with all its problems, is alright. God is in control. He has a plan, even if we can’t see it now.

We have to have find joy and satisfaction and peace in those moments, because I’m afraid that without those things, life will seem to just get harder and harder. We’ll find it harder to keep pushing forward. We’ll find it harder to get back up after we fall.

But where do we find such things in the mundane? God. If we trust in Him. If we rely on Him. It may be one of the hardest things to do. It may be something that we have to keep doing, over and over and over again. Because too easily, when everything is going well, we start to once again rely and trust in only ourselves.

Even if we do trust in Him, it may not change things. We may go through worse hardships than before. But just because God is there, it changes everything. With Him, we’ll have that strength to go forward, to live the life that God has freely given us, His children.

Finding that joy, that satisfaction, that peace, makes all the difference in the world.

-G. Paige