THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING

I find myself uttering these words more frequently than I would like. Sometimes it is about something good but mostly when something has gone wrong. If you haven’t spoken these words already, never fear you will or say something similar. These four words are especially apropos when looking at situations that are beyond our scope of comprehension i.e., tragedy, or an over the top, unexpected, could not have planned if tried to occurrence. Whether it is a good or dreadful thing, one is filled with the sense that nothing he or she has done merits what is being experienced.

I have often experienced this feeling and verbalized it when visiting places like the Grand Canyon or looking into the thundering waters of Victoria Falls or walking on the paths and seeing the dungeons where my enslaved fore parents trod. How does a little Black girl raised by parents with almost no formal education on a working but barely productive dirt farm in rural Georgia get to do this kind of travel? This shouldn’t be happening.

“This shouldn’t be happening” were certainly the words from my lips in early 2021 as my brother’s soul left his earthly shell after removal from a ventilator. Recently when I heard the news of ten people executed while shopping for grocery because they looked like me, I said, “This shouldn’t be happening.”

Yet it is. We find ourselves in the circle of life as we wish it to be but living in that circle in a box labeled “what is.” Granted when the box is filled with good, we want to stay there. When it is uncomfortable, we want out! Our challenge is how to live in the box for the moment surrounded by the circle that promises so much more.

In time, circumstances will raise the box lid like yeast raises dough. You will emerge to join the life of your circle tempered, reshaped, and refined by lessons learned within the box. The waiting is not easy, but neither is it hard.

What’s a possible remedy to a “This should not be happening” situation? Seek to find physical and spiritual release into the moment. Ask, “What am I supposed to learn? Proclaim, “this too shall pass.” Good or tough situations both prepare you for the next box. There will be another.

Isaiah 40:31

PONDER THIS THOUGHT---Good or tough situations end at the same place…they change.