Dealing With Lifes Dark Clouds

I fly a lot because of my job. Because I'm always going in and out of clouds I look at the world from a different perspective than the average person that stays on the ground a majority of the time.

As I journey into the atmosphere from one state to the next, I appreciate God’s works at its purest form. I look at the dark clouds sometimes as I fly out of a city when it's about to rain. But once the plane gets through and to the top of the clouds they are the brightest of whites. From there, everything is as clear as day.

That makes me think about the necessity for us on land to have rain and water. We need it to survive. Where would we be without water to drink, to wash and to water our crops?

Regardless, when we see those dark clouds come up, we are typically not happy about it, unless we are at home in bed. No one wants rain on his or her parade. "Why can't it rain another day? I have stuff to do," we may think to ourselves. We are truly disturbed or upset by the blessing God is bestowing upon us.

We sometimes carry this same sense of annoyance and sometimes anger in other parts of our growth as well. We all go through troubling times. Many of us walk around with what seems like dark clouds over our heads often. We're going through financial difficulty, divorce, break-up, sickness, dealing with death and/or many other painful things.

The older I get and the more I experience life, the more I realize that sometimes we need those dark clouds to grow. We are all living to die. If you believe in God, then you believe we are only passing through on this earth to get closer to Him in heaven. No one is born into the world with knowledge of everything. It comes from life's experiences. Many of those experiences kick us down. My dad told me a long time ago that no one is going to always win, but what makes you a man is learning how to deal with losing. We lose for a reason, to learn to win. It builds character and when we come out of it, we have grown mentally and spiritually and have more to offer to others that will face similar darkness in their lives.

Those days when it's raining on our parades or those weeks when that dark cloud seem to follow us and bring us down are necessities for our growth. They can take us to the next level in life or if we don't deal with them properly, they can keep in that same place. How do you deal with yours?

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