Discouragement

It seems like life for some people goes so smoothly. Of course not everything's perfect, but why does it have to look that way? How are some people so stinking successful?

I am not one of those people. I am in a completely different class. (As I'm sure just about everyone and their mom knows at this point.)

I was thinking about this fact in church yesterday. (Probably should have been paying more attention to the song...) What can I say, it's hard not to think about it. I guess my biggest question is why does it seem like everything is going wrong and nothing is even remotely going right?

First let me add my little disclaimer that I know full well life does not go perfectly, ever. But is it so wrong to wish that things would work out well at least some of the time? (It probably is, but for ranting's sake, I'm ignoring that.)

Sometimes it feels like life is a giant pit I'm trying to dig myself out of. But each time I make some progress there's a landslide or cave-in, and I'm back at the bottom trying to dig. And it's not so much the work that's the hard part, it's the discouragement over failing yet again.

Fail. That word seems to come up a lot lately. It popped into my mind while we were singing that chorus at church. I tried to push it out of my mind because I don't like to think of any of God's children as a failure. But honestly, that's all I feel like right about now. I feel like a failure. (There, I said it.)

But what do you do when things are out of your control? Because I can honestly say, I've tried my best in almost every area, but it sure doesn't seem like my best is working out so well.

So what do you do? If there was such a thing as a magic formula for making things work, believe me, I'd take a good dose of it right about now. But alas, no such formula exists or I wouldn't be in this pit.

I suppose I don't really want an answer, I just want to rant. And maybe beat my head against a wall. Because I'll tell you what, discouragement is a hard one to beat.