The Little Voice

     Life can be hard. That's no secret, but during the hardest of times we reflect. Why? God shapes us according to His design. Each failure builds us. Success doesn't build us. That doesn't make any sense, does it? Well, let me explain. When you succeed it is but a brief moment. All the down time, and failures generate toward that success. You fail, fail, fail, then you make a move forward. The paradox is the win is only a small plateau serving as a springboard for a leap toward yet more failure, and eventually another plateau. 

     A knife does not get sharper through use, only through the stress of the whet stone. A muscle always at rest will never grow, and a mind or spirit that knows only peace with no doubt or question is useless. When the Bible teaches that God will never put us against more than we can take it is simple mathematics. Think of an empty glass being filled. When the liquid reaches the top the glass can take no more, and the spills over. That is the glass's response to the stress of liquid. Sometimes the answer you arrive at is not THE answer, but it will be YOUR answer. When your glass is full it is full. You can take no more. 

     You don't get conflict from success or failure you get it from indecision. Standing there not moving either way. You get indecision from taking too much advice, or listening to opinions of people who really don't know what they're talking about, but they have your ear, and you've let them rent space in your head.  Family is bad about this. You find yourself having to hear them out because they ARE family, and that being so it is hard to get away from them.  When their advice fails it's invariably your fault, because in the train wreck of their own life they simply can't be wrong for giving you the same rules they have failed by. 

     So how do you handle this? Well, you will go through ups and downs in life, and when you do family, friends, and DOCTORS (Oh, God, don't get me started) will give you advice. When they do, and you can't run, hear what they say, but don't LISTEN to what they say! Follow that little voice in YOUR head and work toward yet another plateau. Don't stay there too long, however, because your advisors love to bask in the sunshine of your successes, and the farther away from them you get the fainter their voices become until you just hear your own. Oh, and they love to spend YOUR money while they're telling you that you don't know what you're doing.