Today at my job as a drug and alcohol counselor, I was facilitating a group of clients who have varying amounts of sober time and have been actively engaged in treatment to maintain it.  I asked the folks there about their ability to handle particular life stressors. The concensus was “If it’s a good day, then we can. If it’s a bad day, it’s harder.” I nodded and then shared with them a response I had given to someone who had commented years ago that “Today just isn’t my day.”  I put a mock puzzled look on my face as I asked two powerful questions:  “Whose day is it and who the heck has YOUR day?”  She laughed and shook her head in bewilderment and I could almost see the reset button in her head being engaged.  My clients laughed at those questions and I reminded them that at any point we can reset our own switches by asking ourselves those same questions.

Many’s the time when I have face life circumstances that could have knocked me on my tush and kept me there. What assisted me in standing and remaining vertical was the certainty that the God of my understanding (to invoke a 12 step term) has my back. People often ask how God could allow ‘bad’ things to occur.  I answer with my own questions: “What if God doesn’t let things happen, but rather is there to get us through whatever shows up? What if life circumstances just ARE and our task is to find our way through the maze to the other side? What if every experience, those which we label good, bad or worst, is meant to show us something, to offer valuable lessons to help us recognize how blessed we are, what support there is for us, how those we love are really temporary gifts and every emotional state is fleeting?”  The phrase “This too shall pass.” is one of the grandest truths I know, since happiness and sadness are not sustainable forever. When we are ecstatic we mistakenly think we always will be and when we are despondent, we fear we will stay that way.

My friend Yvonne Kaye encourages people via her voicemail message to “Have any kind of day you’d like.”  The reality is YOU choose and I choose whatever we make of anything and regardless of how a day starts, we decide how it ends. And so it is.

http://youtu.be/OBfqABtOoxI Beautiful Day U2