While walking in the woods the other day I stumbled into a difficult situation.  Someone had cut this barbed wire and haphazardly gotten rid of a few hundred feet of it right in the very spot I was walking.  And lucky me, walked right into the middle of this tangled snare.  Barbed wire has always liked me, just like thorns and briers they seem attracted to me (I am just irresistible like that).

        Someone had turned my little bit of paradise into their personal garbage dump.  The more I looked around this area the more rubbish and trash I discover.  Slowly my frustration changes and turns into anger.  I have allowed someone I will never meet to rain on my parade and begin to ruin my day.  Then as I walked around one person’s trash I realized that they ultimately have no power over my mood.  I am the one calling the shots in my life; I choose my reactions to what happens around me.  I decide if I am positive or negative; I make the decision to sing or to complain.

        We all get to choose our attitudes today.  People around us may act irresponsibly but we decide if their behavior causes us to be bitter or stirs us to be better.  The fact is difficult circumstances, irritable people and normal problems will be in our paths today.  We can not prevent someone from laying the barbed wire of criticism in our paths.  There will always be those who will throw their bad attitudes and trash out in the places we must travel.  But we can choose to make it a better place.

        Perhaps yesterday you stepped into someone else’s garbage pile.  Maybe you were irritated, frustrated or lost your temper.  Do not allow that to poison your attitude today.  Choose to elevate yourself above the snares and traps of yesterday and realize that you can make a difference today.  Stay positive, look for the hidden opportunities of this day and know this; the glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time you fail.  Pearls are the product of pain . . . a precious, tiny jewel conceived through irritation, born of adversity, nursed by adjustments to frustrations.  Some oysters are never wounded . . . and those who seek for gems toss them aside, fit only for stew.

Something to think about:

• I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

• It is never the big things that disturb us, but the trivial things.  We can sit on a mountain but not on a tack.

• If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which healing and strength would come to you.

• What is this pain and irritation? It is the birth pang of a new attitude trying to be born.

• Never become irritable while waiting; if you are patient, you’ll find that you can wait much faster.

• The fellow who thinks he is full of knowledge is especially annoying to those of us who are.

• The things the enemy throws in our path to defeat us can be stepping stones to victory.

• You are never defeated unless you defeat yourself.

• We invite defeat when we remember what we should forget.

Allow irritations and frustrations to educate and elevate
Rickey Moore