Alas, three filling stations later and a queue that saw me crawling for about 3 hours, it finally got to my turn to buy fuel. At this point, my voice had cracked from shouting to get the attention of the fuel attendant who was revelling in the chaos and 200 naira notes she was getting from each gallon transaction. Half way through attending to me, the fuel ran out!
I couldn't help it and bust out laughing. I was laughing more out of gratitude than because of the imminent frustration. Gratitude because I have been reading the book; The secret, the power which is a sequel of the secret and I am learning to sow gratitude to the earth. And sincerely this incident made me understand the power of choosing your reactions.
As I waited in the queue, I chose to do the following:
1. Appreciate God's abundance resources: God is a God of abundance and it is quite obvious by the riches of nature in the universe. The Sun that shines brightly, the clouds that spread widely, the trees that grow greatly. I chose to see that God's resources are abundant despite the scarcity around me caused by the inefficiencies of man.
2. To trust that all I need would be supplied: As a follow up to appreciating God's abundance, a sense of awareness rose in my heart; I knew inside me, that all I needed would be supplied. I kept saying in my mind; even if the fuel finishes while I am on this queue, all I need would be supplied and truthfully I got just enough fuel to hopefully tide me by till man's inefficiencies are resolved.
3. I chose to focus on the things that I could be thankful for: the truth is; it is easier to find the things that are not working or going as planned, but it is a greater gift to find things to be thankful for when things don't seem to go as planned. I chose to thank God that I didn't have an urgent meeting to attend, that I was healthy enough to go through the stress and that I even found a filling station that had fuel.
4. Keep Hope alive: I chose to spend the time listening to some positive preaching on my phone. And before the queue got to my turn, I was totally enriched by two messages from my Pastor and it had kept me motivated and encouraged to know that this too shall pass!
The truth is; all around us there are negative situations and occurrences, but like a John Maxwell said, life is 1% what happens to you and 99% how you respond. If you are currently in a negative situation, find ways to stay positive, the tide would turn eventually and growth of character really happens in these types of situations.
Stay positive and Hopeful!
Tale
I would really love if you share your comments and share this with others who might need it.
Very nice piece! The lesson that in life you can't control other people's actions, and that you only have control over your reaction just seems to be resounding around me. I found myself in a similar situation on Sunday morning at around 10:15am on my way home from church; my car suddenly cut out in the middle of the road just meters from church! It was the fuel pump and it eventually got fixed at around 2:30pm. During my wait in the hot sun, I found myself thankful that it hadn't happened on my way to church at 6am that morning as I was on duty to serve and I don't know what help I would have found at such a dark and lonely hour of the day. I was also thankful that I had no urgent meetings and that the car was able to be fixed on the spot! Praise God!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment. It is good to know you stayed positive and grateful. May God continue to open our eyes to see reasons to be grateful!
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