This past Sunday I was volunteering at my church. I noticed something interesting with two different mothers that I talked to. The first mother showed up with a huge scowl on her face hauling two kids behind her. She looked frustrated as could be, like she had been fighting with them all morning. I said, “good morning” and attempted to strike up a conversation with her asking her how her day was going. She told me how her two kids were being a pain and had not been cooperating with her all morning. They made her late to church and so on and so on. One kid wouldn’t get ready and the other spilt her milk all over the brand new rug. She was having one of those days that everything just flat out went wrong and got worse and worse. She went on her way with that same scowl. You could tell this lady’s mood wasn’t going to change anytime soon. She was just flat out going to have a bad day. So I smiled at her as she went on her way.

The second mother came about 15 minutes later. The service had already been started for 20 minutes and she was hauling 4 little kids no older than 6 or 7 years old each behind her. She had a big smile on her face. She struck up a conversation with me asking me how I was. She continued how blessed she was to be here, even if she was just a “little bit” late. Her husband had taken the van early to work and she had to walk with her kids to get to it. She laughed as she told me how one of her kids had decided to check out to see if his new boots were waterproof by jumping into mud puddles on the way there. She laughed as she said: “At Least now he knows they aren’t!” She told me how she forgot something at home and had to run back to get it. It actually ended up being a good thing because it had reminded her to grab her donation to a children’s christmas drive. She had the warmest smile and just radiated happiness when she walked on into church.

Here was a lady that had double the responsibility of the previous lady with twice as many kids. She was twice as late as the other mother and had bigger issues to deal with her kids. She kept on smiling and didn’t allow it to ruin her day. The point I’m making here is that we can choose if we are going to let our bad days rule us. We can let our problems or small set backs rule our days, or we can make the best out of them and push forward. We can be like the second mother and see the good in bad situations. Or we can choose to be like the first and let it ruin our day. When we allow ourselves to be ruled by outside circumstances where does that get us? Nowhere. It leaves us weak and vulnerable and subject to outside forces. Instead, if we allow ourselves to rule our environment we can become powerful. If we do that, then we can live in and shape our environment in any way we want.

When you are faced with a problem, do you allow it to completely rule you, or do you rule it?

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