Life Comes At You Fast

WOW! Boy has time flown by.

A lot has changed since my last post. If you subscribe to the newsletter then you know what has been going on with me. But for those of you who do not subscribe, I share the following newsletter:

Life Comes At You Fast
By Kiri Christina Hyatt, 2008 ©

Here in the USA there is an auto insurance company whose TV commercials are metaphors for life and has spiritual application. In each commercial something totally unexpected happens to a person’s brand new car. For example, in one commercial a huge can of paint falls from a hanging scaffolding onto a parked car. The fire department immediately shows up, pushes the car out of the way, then goes to work rescuing the painter from the dangling scaffolding. Seconds later a delivery truck slams into the new car totaling it. Then, as in every commercial, the announcer says,

"Life comes at you fast, Nation Wide (insurance) is on your side".

Sometimes life does come at us fast. Sometimes it comes at us so fast we barely know what hit us. That is how 2008 has felt for me.

Unexpected Event Number One

At first the year seemed like any other year. Nothing much out of the ordinary, but by the end of the month I was having some computer problems. Nothing to alarming but all these strange problems prompted me to back up everything on my hard drive: a task I had been neglecting. Then the first week of February my hard drive died.

I spent the next few weeks trying to recover from that catastrophe only to discover something had gone terribly wrong with the back up feature included with Windows. I had never had a problem before using that program, but this time the program had totally failed me. I finally figured out how to solve the problem on a few of my backup files, but even to this day a number of files, including articles I had written for future newsletters, along with medical articles, book reports, the web site, office information, the accounting, and more documents seem to be totally lost. I am baffled as to what happened and will never trust the Window’s backup feature again.

Unexpected Event Number Two

Before I had a chance to fully recover from the hard drive failure, another unexpected event would come at me. I had lived in my former apartment complex for a long time and though I never really liked the place, it was in a good location. The complex needed a lot of repairs but it was just too much work and too expensive to move. During the past year though the physical environment in my apartment complex deteriorated to the point that on February 20, 2008 an announcement was made that all residents would be relocated due to toxic mold. Since moving out, an Environmental Mold consultant was hired who found Stachybotrys in my unit and other toxic molds in other units.

Starting from the day after the announcement was made, my life became extremely hectic and stressful. My former complex has 100 units and all of us needed to find a new place to live immediately. The problem is there was a limited number of complexes from which to choose from. Often over twenty individuals would express interest in a specific complex that only had one or two vacancies available, so a lottery would take place to award the available apartment(s). In the end God answered my prayers and I wound up with a wonderful apartment. But for three weeks my life was in total chaos as I visited complexes, filled out paperwork and packed to move.

Unexpected Event Number Three

On March 12, 2008 the movers arrived and by that afternoon I was in my new apartment. I was thrilled. I now lived in a nicer bigger apartment, a nicer complex, and across the street from a lovely park. I could not be happier. I wrongly assumed that as soon as I unpacked all those boxes and got organized, my life would settle down and I could get back to work. I forget that sometimes life comes at you fast.

On March 13, about 25 hours and 30 minutes after the movers’ left, I twisted my foot. I was simply walking when I stepped into a parking lot and my foot twisted causing intense pain. Eventually I would be diagnosed with a fractured navicular bone and a sprained ankle. I spent several months in an air cast and on crutches, even forced into a wheel chair. Three months after being injured I am still struggling with tendonitis and lots of inflammation, making walking very painful. So far I have endured more then 2 months of physical therapy three times a week.
Breaking a foot is hard enough, but to do it the day after moving is a nightmare. Trying to cope in an apartment full of boxes while unable to walk was a difficulty I do not wish on anyone. All I can say is that sometimes life comes at you/us fast.

When Life Comes At You Fast

If a similar scenario had occurred in your life, do you know how you would react? Are you the type of person who breaks down in tears when life comes at you fast? Or do get angry? Maybe you stuff your emotions? We all react in specific patterns, do you know how you react? Is your way of reacting hurting you and others? Is it displeasing to God?

Like most people, there was a time in my life I simply reacted. I never thought about it. Some frustration would occur and I would react in a very predictable manner. Then I began to pay attention to how I reacted. Only then did I discover my particular pattern for responding to frustration, injuries, etc.

Do you know your particular pattern for responding to life? If you do not know, make a commitment to start paying attention. Ask the Holy Spirit to begin showing you how you respond to life’s frustrations.

Once you began to recognize how you react to frustrations and other life events, then you are ready for step two. Why do you react the way you do? Often there is a specific reason that can be traced from your childhood.

You may know exactly why you behave the way you do in certain situations, or you may be totally clueless.

If you are totally clueless, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you why you react the way you do. There is a reason. It may take awhile but the Holy Spirit will began to show you things about your life you never realized before. Be open to what He has to show you.

This is not a one-time prayer. Even though I had become aware of how I reacted in certain situations, I had no idea why. I knew the way I reacted was not good, but I had no idea why I reacted that way and no idea how to change. I just would react. Then later when I realized what had happened, I would ask God why? Why do I behave that way? Why do I get so upset when ______________ happens. It was a slow process but in time the Holy Spirit began revealing the answer to that question to me.

I am now at a place in my life where I know how I tend to react in certain situations and why I tend to react that way. I still have a long way to go in changing to a healthier pattern of behavior but I am making progress. So on March 13 when I twisted my foot I was angry (I knew my apartment was full of boxes needing to be unpacked so it was a terrible time to be injured), but at the same time I was aware of my old patterns of behavior and with God’s help I was able to make a conscience decision to not behave that way. That was a major victory in my life.

If you have never thought about how you react when life comes at you fast, I pray you make the effort to start doing so. God does not want us to be absent-minded when it comes to who we are. He wants us to know ourselves. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can get to know who we are, change our self-destructive ways, and become more like Jesus.

In closing I just want to state I have only shared the major events that have taken place this year. There have been numerous minor events. One such event was the host for the newsletter temporarily loosing the template for the newsletter and completely changing the site, so I have to learn it all over again. With all these problems hitting me at once and the pain of a broken foot preventing me from spending much time at the computer, I just have not been able to put new newsletters together, as I would have liked. I am very sorry for that. Hopefully during the next few months I can rectify that situation. Until then, the newsletters will be sporadic.
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I learned from a friend that hard drives have a warranty that goes beyond the warranty provided by the company that puts the computer together. Since I replaced my own hard drive I was able to check with the manufacture’s web site, which told me my four-year hard drive had a five year warranty. I followed the directions and shipped my dead hard drive off to the manufacturer who promptly shipped me a new in return. Keep this in mind if you ever experience a hard drive failure. Even if you pay someone to replace your hard drive, it is worth it to ask the tech for your old hard drive or for him to ship it off to the manufacture if it is still under warranty.