no second chances

I was at a Bible Study last night where the topic was John Bunyon and the idea of suffering. The topic of suffering seems to be a common Bible Study discussion. The truth is that nobody actually likes to suffer and go through trials and tribulations, but we all have them in our lives. Some people go through more than others, but no one is immune to trials in their lives. We cannot control what will happen to us or even when it will happen to us. The only thing we can control is what our response will be to those negative events.

John Bunyon spent 12 years in jail followed by another year after his intial release. The conditions of his jail sentence were not legitimate and beyond his control. He was sentenced to jail because of his faith. Prior to being sent to jail he married and had his first child. That child was born blind. He went on to have four more children. He then lost his wife and later remarried. Obviously he could have been bitter about so many of the circumstances in his life, but instead he remained hopeful and even wrote several very inspiring books while in jail.

Clearly, I do not quite follow the example of how to handle trials in ones life that was set by John Bunyon. I wish I had more strength some days to rise higher than I do and to handle trials with more grace, wisdom, character, and glory to God. My mistakes along the way are many and at times I wonder if I will ever 'get it right'. More now that ever I remind myself to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I cannot change my past mistake, there is little I can do to 'make it right, but I can change the way I react to the negatives in my life. My hope is that I can grow to be more like the person God wants me to be, to take trials with more joy and less grumbling.

My dad always tells me to 'do the best I can'. This is one of the "Four Agreements" in the book that my dad bought for me. My dad tries to live his life by the "Four Agreements". I have spent the better part of the past 7 years since he bought me that book looking for ways to make fun of him for liking the book. Yet somehow, no matter how much I try to avoid it, I know that in this situation my dad is correct. I am only now learning what it really means to 'do the best that I can'.

None of this is meant to be a time to beat up on myself and dwell on all my past mistakes which will ultimately bring down my attitude and be self-defeating. This fall has presented more challenges than I ever expected. There are many aspects of those challenges where I feel good about the decisions I made and the way that I handled the trials presented to me. However, there are other aspects where I am not so proud of the choices that I made and the way I chose to handle things. Being realistic and honest, I am acknowledging these things to myself and trying to do what I can to improve things and keep the negatives from happening again.

There are no such things as 'second chances' in life. I wish there were and I wish I had an unlimited supply of them waiting for me to use whenever I screwed up on something. If someone out there knows something about this idea of second chances that I seem to be missing...please fill me in on the details. For as far as I can tell, there is only one chance in life. We have the opportunities to make corrections along the way, but that one chance is all we have before us.

No one ever told me adulthood would be so confusing and so challenging. It always seemed so cool as a kid to be an adult.