26-04-13

Friday, April 26, 2013

It is often said that this life is a marathon, not a sprint. That's a fair analogy, but I'd like to propose another: This life is a war, not a battle. I thought it would especially fit this week, considering it was Anzac day just yesterday. A day where we pause and reflect on the bravery and determination of soldiers from both Australia and New Zealand over the years. It is not glorifying war, but it's to honour those who fought and have given up their lives for our basic freedoms that we take for granted today.

In a similar fashion, but by no means making light of war, normal life can feel like a war sometimes. We may not have rifles, be in trenches and literally having to save ourselves from certain death scenarios everyday, but life can definitely punch us in the face and make us feel like we have bullets coming. The sad part is, I wonder, how many of those scenarios do we just make up in our own minds that never really eventuate into anything of significance? Take Tuesday night, for example: I had just found out some unhappy news from someone I love and I made a poor choice to let it get to me in a way that made me lose sleep that night. Now, the more wise option would have been to admit my emotions before God and deal with them, then try and sleep. It isn't very often anymore that happens to me either. As I now know, a lot of the thoughts that kept me awake that night were exaggerated by my tired head and weren't real things worth thinking about, especially until silly hours of the morning that are only good for sleeping.

Sometimes, you've just got to tell your brain to shut up because it can lie to us so easily and when we are that tired and vulnerable, we tend to go with it. So, how do we fix this? Well, keeping mentally busy is one way of dealing with it. If you're continually focused on something, you won't have time to think about things, especially to the point of losing sleep.

My mum puts it really well. She would often ask me, "What are you doing right here and right now?" That is a very fair question and one that usually keeps me positive. If we spend too much time on the past or the future, either way it can get us down. Why worry about the past? What has happened has happened and there is nothing we can do, except learn from it and move on. Why worry about the future? It hasn't even happened yet and we have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

Let me encourage you all to keep yourselves mentally busy as much as possible, take life one day at a time and we should win more than we lose in life. Learn from the past, live in the present and plan for the future.