Rainy Days and Tangled Lights
Maya Angelou is attributed with saying, “I’ve learned you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve experienced my share of rainy days – literally and figuratively. One of them happened to be arriving in a foreign country only to find my suitcase didn’t make it onto the airplane. Not much else can bring a vacation down so quickly (except maybe losing your wallet/phone in a busy city – which may or may not have been another “rainy” day)!
And yes, before the advent of pre-lighted trees, I even spent an afternoon untangling those proverbial Christmas lights.
I’d like to think that the way I handled those rainy-day situations showed me to be a person of unparalleled grace, patience, and serenity. I’ll let you decide whether or not you think that’s an accurate representation, but regardless, it reminds us of one important fact: We ALL experience setbacks, frustrations, and obstacles in our paths. No one is immune to bad things that happen to us in this life. Yes, I said bad things happen TO us, because many times it’s simply out of our control. The airline loses our luggage. The pandemic forces school and business closures. The Chick-fil-a employee didn’t give me enough ketchup in the drive-thru and now my kids won’t eat their dinner. There is plenty of blame to go around.
We can try to control our circumstances, but of course we can’t, so in the end, we just end up angry, frustrated, or, at best, annoyed. We have expectations for the way we want our lives to go, and when something happens that gets us off track, we react.
One thing I try to remember: While we may not always be able to control our circumstances, we can and should control how we react to our circumstances.
Maya Angelou is not the only one with a way to quickly sum up a person. Jesus also tells us an easy way to learn a lot about a person: by looking at the kind of fruit he or she bears.
In Matthew Chapter 7, Jesus says “A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit … Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”
This Christmas season, let’s be a people who dance in the rain. A people who react to life’s uncertainty with grace, trusting in our Father’s plan. Let’s be a people who are identified by actions prompted by joy, peace, hope, and love.
-Mandy Rogers