How easy it is to run away when we face difficulties. All our being longs for hardships to disappear or not to happen at all. If we could change it in that moment, in times of difficulty, any picture or image of our life in different circumstances looks so perfect. But it is very misleading.
Place without hardships or difficulty does not exist. We’ll always have to fight on this earth. For fight we must. If we run away from one thing, we’ll meet different thing.
“Once you start running, you’ll never stop.” I heard somewhere.
Mother Teresa once said: “I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”
We can’t decide some circumstances of our lives. We can’t change some things like where we are from, who is our family or how we look. Why then, do so many of us spend our entire lives trying to change those things? We just keep running away and at the end we realize that we wasted our whole lives. We are alive but not living.
So many times I said like Frodo in the Lord of the rings: “Why am I in this situation? I wish it didn’t happen in my time." And always I hear Gandalf’s answer:
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Why don’t we accept these things and start to live. We can enjoy this life. My prayer use to be: “God, please, change these difficulties, these times, for me,” and not much happened; now I pray: “Lord give me strength to embrace these times, help me to live them to the fullness and fill me with joy in the midst of them.” And very soon life became so beautiful again.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us, so let us decide to live in the strength, love and joy of Christ.