Firing Days

Apparently this was the message for today. I got home from shipping some stuff off, and picked up a book that my father-in-law gave me to read today called "Under the Potter's Hands; Count it all JOY!" by Flete Robinson. I only read one quick story from the book, and the first line was "It was a firing day." She is talking about how if we are to be the clay in God's hands, days in the "kiln" are part of the process. This reminded me of my "Some days are bug days, some days are windshield days" analogy, only on a much more spiritual level. ;) The quick story was about her family which had no food, no money, and a dirty fridge, and how she was sarcastically trying to find the good in it, and accidentally really did find the good. It's about how you take things that go wrong, bad days, and try to find the good, the lesson, have the right attitude and heart about them, learn from them, not succumb to the temptation to just grump and complain and pout. People of all and no faiths have their own version of this, because it's a true lesson regardless of your beliefs. The aspects of your life that you feed and nurture will be the aspects that grow and become strongest in you. We all know people who can consistently take the smallest problem and turn it into everyone else's biggest nightmare, and people who can take the worst situation in the world and handle it with grace and dignity. Neither one of those just happens, they are simply outward expressions of each person's most frequently allowed internal dialog. Taking it to the book's spiritual level, those difficult days are the ones that can be used to allow the Potter to smooth away the rough, ugly edges. Anyway, I read this story, then sat down to my email, where the only message waiting for me was my "Quotes of the Day" that get sent to me, well, each day. :) So my quote for today?

"Anyone can be happy when times are good; the richer experience is to be happy when times are not."
~Susan Harris

So whether this message was for me or for whoever is reading this, or both, it's a good thought to have for the day...maybe especially if it is a firing day. :)