fighting for a good day ...

some days are just good. you ‘wake up on the right side of the bed’ as they say. it’s friday. the sun is shining in a clear blue sky. you get ready super-quickly, giving you time to swing by your favorite coffee shop on the way to work, where you wind up getting a free drink. your boss is out of town, so your day is easy, and you spend all day looking forward to meeting friends after work.

and some days are just destined to be bad. it’s tuesday. you stayed up late working on a project, then sleep through your alarm. it’s raining and your umbrella is in the car. you spill coffee on your white shirt as you stumble out the door. traffic is awful. your boss yells at you as soon as you walk through the door. and you are already dreading having to stay late for a meeting.

but then there are days that could go either way. you wake up. you get ready. you go to work. you do your work. you go home. you eat dinner. you go to bed. it has its little annoyances, like any day. whether it becomes good or bad is entirely up to you.

you have to fight for it to be a good day.

at work, one of my little friends requires an extra measure of patience and ingenuity. it’s like getting a physical and mental workout every day. on good days, it’s so much easier to keep things from spiraling out of control. on bad days, it’s all i can do not to tear out my hair. but then there are those days that could go either way. they have many of the same annoyances and difficulties. it’s all about fighting to maintain a positive attitude and keep my head in the game. i still have to wrestle physically and mentally, but it’s worth it when i can still walk away from the day with a smile on my face.

at a football game last friday night, i watched what can happen when you don’t do this. the teams were fairly evenly matched. in the first quarter, our team made a series of silly little mistakes that allowed the other team to take the lead, but the game was far from lost. unfortunately, we let those annoyances and difficulties get the best of us. \we lost our positive attitude. we didn’t keep our heads in the game. we had a chance but let it slip through our fingers. things were over long before the final whistle ever blew.

how easily can a day get away from us like that before we even know what hit us? and how do you keep it from happening? it’s going into it saying, “God, i’m tired, and this is going to be hard. i’m going to need your help to get me through it.” you’ll probably still have to fight for the day to be good. however, i’ve found that the days that start out rough can become your best day ever because God showed up.

will you let Him?