Betting

I have a small electronic poker game that I occasionally play. I kind of bet on a whim. You can bet up to 50 in increments of 10. If I'm feeling good I bet 50, if I'm not feeling it at all I bet 10, other than that I bet somewhere in the middle. Obviously there is no rhyme or reason to it, you have to bet before you see any cards. I got to wondering what that says about me and how I approach my life. Do I hold back too much? Am I totally random on how much I am willing to risk? Why place a partial bet? You either believe you've got it or you don't, why go halfway? There's no benefit to it, it's just being chicken and living life in the middle. It's kind of a cop out, a way to NOT make a decision when a decision has to be made. The only thing it accomplishes is to make me made when I SHOULD have gone all in.

Other life lessons from poker:

1. Sometimes you are so busy looking for what you want you don't see what you've got. If you are focused on the possibility of getting THE card you need to create THE hand you are aiming for then you are likely to miss any other possibility. The result is that you could fold a hand that could have won because you just didn't see it until it was too late. Are you focused on a particular outcome in life? Are you frustrated because you are getting what you want? Maybe it's time to take a fresh look at your hand. There's probably something there you aren't seeing.
2. Sometimes all you see is what you've got and you miss what's going on around you. Have you ever been completely excited about what's going on in your life and been blindsided by what you've missed in someone else's? Sometimes you just look like a complete jerk, but sometimes you end up losing big time! Don't forget to take a look around, and remember, not all their cards are on the table.
   
3. Sometimes you don't have faith in what you've got and you overestimate what others have. Some of us are so down on ourselves that we just can't see that what we have to give could be valuable. Whatever we have we feel others have something better, therefore it just doesn't matter what we have. Do you really want to stand before God one day and explain that you didn't accomplish what He put you on this earth to do because you thought someone else's hand was better?
   

The check-mark of life

Life's ebb and flow can sometimes look like a check-mark. If you want to go higher than you ever have before then you usually need to take a dip first. Sometimes that means getting rid of something like a habit or dealing with a hurt or removing someone from your life. Sometimes it means you have to hit something bad enough to make you want to go higher. Sometimes it just means you need to rest up first. Whatever it is, it's good to recognize the dips as a potential point in life for acceleration rather than just in inconvenient dip. I don't know about you, but I HATE missed opportunities.

Spinnin' Around

There's a song I love, or used to love (I haven't heard it in a while), called Spinnin' Around. It talks about how God's ways are completely backward from the world's ways:

A is last, Z is first
Living life in reverse
'Cause that's the way it works

You can check out the rest of the lyrics here. This song is so true. God's Word tells us that you must be last to be first, you need to be weak to be strong, you need to die to live....

I was watching So You Think You Can Dance last night and there was a dance done by the final two girls depicting a journey. They started at one end of the stage and "journeyed" toward the other end. There were times when they'd move forward, sometimes backward. Sometimes they'd leap, sometimes they'd fall. Sometimes they looked graceful, sometimes their bodies were contorted. Their skirts were made of layers of fabric and throughout their journey they'd shed layers.

It got me thinking about life and its supposed burdens. We all have a journey and places we need to go to in life. My husband likes to say that if the journey is easy you are moving in the wrong direction (I have such a wonderfully smart husband). Along the journey it seems like sometimes we move forward, and rarely are we graceful, but mostly we are falling, or being stopped, or contorting, or moving backward. The causes of these delays and these discomforts are what we refer to as burdens. I love the dance because they aren't putting on the layers, the layers are coming off.

That's why I said supposed burdens. Are they really burdens or the instruments used to break us out of the confines that are limiting our potential? And if that's the case should we stop fighting them and dreading them? If they are really tools used to better us and we recognized them as such would our journey transform? Would the process become shorter and less painful and the recovery process quicker? Would we need less of them because we would no longer be damaged in the fight against them? Or because we actually learned something from them?

What are you fighting against right now? Take a moment and try to see it as a tool God is using to free you. I know it's hard, but really try. How could this new perspective change things?