If life ever threw a curve ball, then I guess I'm up to bat right now. So in this scenario, the game plan should be simple right? Just step up to the plate and take a swing. The only thing is, right now I feel like its a full count in the bottom of the 9th, bases are loaded, and we are down by 3...and I haven't played ball in years. The only way to win is to swing, and by some miracle as the bat is coming around it will connect with that thrown curve ball and fly out into the stands, having hit a home run, effectively winning the game. This sounds hard doesn't it? Now add this, my stats are horrible, especially my batting stats. If I swing and miss, everything is lost, everything. And you have to swing, there is no option.
Now, I'm not much of a baseball fan in reality, but it was what started when I put my fingers to the keyboard, and it was a metaphor that seemed to fit fairly well, so I went with it. I'm sure this sounds familiar in the life of anyone who might stumble upon this blog and happen to read it. We all have the curve balls thrown our way at that crucial, one chance only junctions in life, and maybe we have more than one, but seem to miss repeatedly, one after the other with out fail. Now for the crucial question we all want the answer to in this metaphor...how do we increase our batting average and actually hit those seemingly impossible pitches? Well, if someone has the answer to that question, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it!
This is my life right now, has been for a long, long time. Game after game (still sticking with the metaphor) it seems like that is the only part I play, bottom of the 9th, full count, bases loaded and down by 3. I've swung and missed many of those balls in recent months and years, and lost many or the most important parts of my life over it. The memories of standing out in that field after all the disseminated fans have gone, and the distraught team-mates have left as well, knowing that you had the chance to have it all, everything you wanted in life...and you lost it...again. The pain and anguish of the single moment is bad enough...but then reliving the moment over and over and over again, the pain becomes unbearable.
But what more can you do but let the team you love more than anything in the world let you go and leave you behind so that they don't have to continue to feel their own new pain and anguish over and over and over again as well?
We've all heard some version of the quotes that say "time heals all wounds," and "sometimes it gets worse before it can get better." These 2 quotes at the core of their existence are probably true enough. For many of the pains of this world though, time I fear, will not happen in this life, but after the resurrection when, if we are worthy of it, we are taken to live forever with that God who gave us life. I don't see an end to the pain and sorrows that inflict me now, and because of that I fear that I have wandered farther and farther away from my loving Father in Heaven in anger to the pains that I have to bear in this life. In wandering away from Him, I also wander away from Jesus Christ, the only person who can truly understand my pain, and in understanding, be able to comfort me in a way that no other ever could, even unto healing me. For now I will have to endure to the end the troubles and pains of this life, striving constantly to live in faith, waiting for the day when all my troubles, and the troubles of those I love will end, and if we are worthy, hear those long awaited words: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant...enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
