By JMathis

The notion of jumping off of life’s cliff, closing your eyes and free-falling into His arms sounds very romantic and simplistic. Taking that belly dive into your destiny, though, requires really taking stock of the difficult and the perfect, the bitter and the sweet.

Embracing those perfect and sweet days of free-fall means challenging ourselves to examine the truth behind the difficult and bitter days of our journey.

Are there dark forces of the air that make this flight into free-fall so treacherous? Or, are we often the engineers of the difficult and the bitter?

Looking back, we see that the free-fall is slow and painful, often excruciatingly so, because of the baggage we carry with us. He tells us to cast our cares upon Him, but we insist to Him that there are things we cannot live without in our voyage: the makeup bag (our daily mask we wear in front of others), a set of clothes for every temperature change (our insecurities about leaving our comfort zone), shoes for every possible occasion (distractions that keep us away from our true calling).

Our hording of this baggage then makes us ill-prepared for the evil that surrounds us. We are slow and sluggish in our lack of faith and trust, making us susceptible to inclement weather, birds of prey and the darkness that abounds. The world smells our weakness, our fear, our vulnerability, and then pounces for the attack.

We dismiss that He is made strong in our weakness, and we attempt to scale life’s boulders using our own might and fortitude. We forget that He is our shield and our night-watchman, and we attempt to make navigational errors that often cost us dearly.

While there is no doubt that He is faithful and merciful to catch us before we plunge into oblivion, are we the ones that make this journey into free-fall even more troublesome?

Perhaps free-falling into the perfect and the sweet really could be so simple. Perhaps it is us who make our difficult and bitter days even harder.

Take stock of the difficult and the perfect, the bitter and the sweet.

Who is the architect behind your difficult and bitter days?

Could it be you?