Running from the shower at the gym with a towel wrapped round my waist turned out to be a bad idea. As my feet slid from underneath me and I crashed to the floor without the towel I rediscovered public shame. The shame has passed, but the pain hasn’t. Sitting, walking and driving have become unbearable. So has showing my face at the gym.
Just when everything is going as I hope, often something unexpected comes along and disrupts my routines in such a way that I can’t achieve what I was hoping to.
Academics call this in-between state the ‘liminal’, an unexpected zone between what was known and secure and what is unknown and somewhat frightening.
Most of us find ourselves in one of these spots from time to time. In most cases we just wait it out, hoping that things will return to normal; normal being the way things were. But often they never are.
The question I have learned to ask in these transitional times is, ‘can I find life in the transition?’ Does it need to be a nasty experience from which I must quickly escape, or can these experiences be opportunities for growth?
The rational part of me says, ‘of course they can be good’, but experience tells me I want to get away from such experiences as fast as possible with smallest amount of inconvenience.
To some extent how we approach life’s ‘curve balls’ is dependant on personality. Some of us see the glass half empty while others see it half full. Yet despite this I think the way we handle restrictive events is essentially about decisions. We can decide how we’re going to face our circumstances. We can play the role of powerless victim, allowing ourselves the luxury of spiralling into depression or alternatively we can chose a different path.
When everything goes wrong we can decide we are not going to be defeated. Rather, we have the capacity to make the most of it however difficult, painful or embarrassing. This is not to say it will be fun, but we have the opportunity of allowing every event to be significant in a positive way and not destructive.
As a follower of Christ I am bound by a belief that claims God is always with me. Because I believe that everything that is good in life comes from the hand of God, then God’s presence in all events means I can draw the very best from them. It is still requires a choice though; a choice I have to make every day.