Obstacles

My daughter mentioned obstacles this week and it’s been playing on my mind ever since. When something plays on my mind for too long, I tend to just want to write it out.

Obstacle:

One that opposes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress.

Any obstruction designed or employed to disrupt, fix, turn, or block the movement of an opposing force

Interesting definition, yes?

I believe there are two kinds of obstacles; good or bad. What’s hard is trying to figure out which is which!

Some obstacles are there to make us work harder; like a hurdle in a race. It’s meant to be jumped over and it takes training to be able to do it! The harder we work, the stronger we get…and in the end, we can rejoice in the fact that because we worked hard and didn’t let anything stand in our way, we accomplished something great!

But then, there are the hurdles that are meant to *stand in the way* or *turn*…us away from danger. Those are the ones i think so often we want to ignore. We are a stubborn people.

With this type of obstacle, I think of a road block. Here’s a good example:

Two years ago I was having some health issues. They were pretty serious and I was done dealing with them. I’d finally given up and decided to have the issues taken care of. I had to go through some pretty …er…invasive testing before they’d perform the surgery.  Everything was set up and ready to go.

The week before my surgery, I had a bad result on a completely different health issue, so my surgery was cancelled. To be honest, I am not sure at that point, what I was more upset about; the bad result or the fact that my surgery was canceled. It took another week for me to finish further testing in regards to the second issue; and I was cleared for surgery. BUT, by that time, my insurance had been switched and I was no longer allowed to have my surgeon perform my surgery.

See, now THAT is an obstacle!

Not one to let anything stand in the way of what I knew I needed, I went to battle. I fought and fought the system, got outside approval, and had the surgeon I wanted perform my surgery.

And it nearly killed me.

After the fight of my life, I spent the next SEVERAL months undergoing the most painful, humiliating procedures ever known to man. (or at least, me.) I will never be the same again. There are certain things I’ve just learned to accept. But I praise God that I have my life and I appreciate it more. He took this difficult time in my life and showed me just what HE could do when I let Him be in control instead of me.

But I also learned something else. When God puts an OBVIOUS or not so obvious obstacle in my way, next time I’m going to ask His advice before I just push my way through. (Later the same surgeon had his license taken away for some stuff…only to get it back, but it showed me that I shouldn’t work so hard to hurdle every obstacle that comes my way!)

We currently have some new obstacles going on…I’m sure we will always have them, it’s how we grow; but I’ve also learned to stand back, be patient, and say, “Ok, God, what do you want me to do with this one?” before I run full speed ahead to push my way through them, around them, or over them!