I wonder how much control you think you have over your own life. A lot? A little? None? Some? I've recently been thinking about life like a river. Often the river is flowing along in a kind of meandering peaceful sort of flow and we feel like we are in complete control. Other times are more like the river in the picture and it feels like nothing can stop, slow down or change the course of the water. In rivers like this you can see boulders that prove no match for the swirling agitated flow. Still other times feel as out of control as Niagara Falls which is the other picture. Such a powerful falling flow that we can feel overwhelmed. In any case all of those rivers are out of control. They all obey gravity alone. I'm not trying to say that our lives are that much out of our control, but out of control they are. Going back to the movie "Blind Side" that I wrote about previously, you can see his life just happened. The chances of someone in Michael's situation finding any resources to help let alone the fantastic blessings that just appeared in his path are miniscule. Or take the four police officers in Washington state who were starting the day at a breakfast spot going over cases it seems when suddenly they are killed and their families lives altered forever. Or something as simple as your wife getting sick, or you lose your job, or your marriage ends. You could write about many many other boulders that could change the flow of your river dramatically. One problem is facing our own lack of control which can create fear. The other problem is assigning too much control to everybody else. How many people in Michael's circumstances have we condemned because we wanted to think they had complete control of their lives and environments. My river of life has run a unique course this year. At some points I have had a generous amount of control over my path, but at others I've had no control over my situation, just my response. We all have a similar mixture in our journey down life's river.
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