LIke a Spinning Top, Sometimes we Lose Our Balance

If you stand over a spinning top, one that is spinning cleanly, you can clearly see a dot around which the top is circling...a clearly defined center. If something knocks the top, even slightly, the orbit rattles and wobbles and there is a messy center...Off course it goes. Spinning out of control.

Life is like this. It's our ability to reset our spinning, refind our center and begin afresh that brings us back into alignment. What is it that helps you find your center? What tricks do you use for reset?

Recently, I lost a job opportunity about which I was very excited. I am usually able to look to God and pray for understanding that this was a path that was not meant to be. I am struggling this time. I want to know it all. I want to understand why this fell apart after two solid months of interviews and moving closer to the goal. Why?

Maybe, the way we recenter isn't always getting over it. Maybe, it's not always focusing on the fact that it wasn't meant to be. Maybe, it's about acknowledging that it sucks. Not everything is going to be easily rationalized and I am not always going to be able to justify it. Nope. Sometimes it just sucks.

Like the spinning top, sometimes the whole thing has to be knocked down. Comepletely off course, it has to be flattened to the table...and then picked back up and restarted on a clean path...on a new trajectory. Only to eventually peter out and fly out of control again.

In acknowledging the suckiness of life, we do not pretend we are spinning cleanly. No. We realize we have been flattened to the table. It's time to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.

Life is a series of these toddles. Down we fall, head over teakettle, onto our faces. But God is there either way...encouraging us to stand back up. Urging us on, like a one year old learning to walk, He is holding out his hands and saying, "C'mon, you can do it!"

We all fall down.
We get back up.
And we toddle forward.
And gather our steam and start spinning in control again.