The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

I may have written about this in the past, but it is something that I ponder often so I thought I would write about it now. Generally when something happens in someone’s life, they judge it as either good or bad. For me this is difficult - almost impossible. When I look at situations it may have been something negative but then you can also look at it and see the positives as well. The positives may not be there immediately, but it cannot be all bad. Right?

So how about for a 2009 New Year’s resolution you stop looking at situations as good or bad. But just as they are, and what you can learn from them. Maybe some examples can help grasp an understanding of this.

How about if you won the lottery? This is a dream for many and most would consider this a good situation. Right? Well, I just did a Google search and it seems that many lottery winners squander their winning within the first five years, many have committed suicide, gotten divorced and the separation of families is a huge problem. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with a lottery win which most are not prepared for when their numbers come up. I won a business competition a couple of year ago, and the prize was $10,000 and after that article showed up in the local paper I had all sorts of investors and people contacting me. I can’t imagine what it would be like with a lottery win.

For the next situation I will borrow from my husbands’ life. If you have read my book than you already know it, but when he was seven years old his Dad died of cancer, when he was 12 years old his mom died of a heart attack and he was put into foster care. If I took a poll my guess is that people would say this was a bad situation. If you ask my husband, he would say “good.” My husband was put into a Christian foster home and learned lessons that he most likely wouldn’t have, if his parents were still alive. Sure, it took time for him to get to the “good” but you can’t judge a situation too quickly.

I named this blog the good, the bad, and the ugly for a reason. I believe that some situations are just ugly, where there is so much going on you don’t even have time to think, you just have time to pray “HELP!”

In every situation there is a lesson to be learned. So instead of the poor me, and why does this always happen to me? Why not say - Why is this always happening to me? What do I need to learn from this situation so I can move on?

I know that things have changed a lot for me now that I am not looking at everything as good or bad but as an opportunity to learn something new.