Trials and Tribulations and Lessons to Be Learned

Trials and Tribulations and Lessons to Be Learned

It was Monday morning and Darlene was running late
for work. She has a million things to do each morning
before going to work. She has three children who have
to be dropped off at two different schools and THEN,
she can go to work.

She finally gets everyone out of the house and jumps
in the car. As she puts the keys in the ignition and
turns the car on, she notices the gas light is on.

“Oh, shot.” She says, as she gets angry with her husband.
He was the last to drive the car and they have a rule
that you can’t get out of the car unless you leave at
LEAST a quarter of a tank of gas. He didn’t even mention
to her that he didn’t get gas. She was steamed.

Well, she had to get the kids to school first. See
it is important to her that they get to school on
time. She could be a little late and perhaps no one
would notice.

As she drops the last child off at school, subconsciously
she jumps on the highway.

“Oh, my goodness,” she says a half mile down the road,
as she notices the gas light again. I’ll stop at the gas
station by the job, she thought.

She then starts her daily affirmations as she’s gotten
use to doing when she is in the car alone. She thinks
about her day and the things she has to accomplish.

As she pulls into the parking lot of her job, she
realizes that she STILL hasn’t gotten the gas.

Oh, well, she will get gas on her lunch break.

As the day ends, she rushes out of the building
and jumps in the car while she scrambles for the
ear piece so she could call her brother to see
how everything went for him. He had a big job
interview and she wanted to see how everything
worked out for him.

As she drives off and heads towards the highway on
her way to pick up the children, she notices the car
isn’t driving right.

“Hey, Rich, I have to go. Something is wrong with
the car. I better pull over to check it out,” she
says as she hangs up the phone.

Before she gets a chance to pull the car over,
she realizes what happened.

She is out of gas.

She completely forgot about getting the gas on
her lunch break because she worked through lunch.

“Please God. Let me get this car over to this little
divider so that I will be out of the way of traffic.”

Immediately, the car sputtered forward and she is able
to make it into the divider that separates the two highways.

The next thing she did was to call her husband and
tell him to pick up the kids. She also told him about
how she was stranded on the side of the highway because
the car had run out of gas.

“What are we going to do to get you home?” her husband asks.

“Don’t worry about that right now. Just jump on the
bus and get the kids. I’ll be fine. God will take
care of me,” she says with confidence.

Darlene digs in her bag and pulls out a book
as she waits to see what happens and learn
how she is going to get home. She wasn’t
panicking in any way. She was totally relaxed,
a little cold because she was afraid to turn the
car on to get heat, but relaxed nonetheless.

Five minutes later her husband calls and tells
her that he had contacted two of his friends.
One is at work and won’t be available for another
three hours and the other won’t be able to get
her for another two hours.

Darlene wasn’t concerned. “Call John. See if you
can get him to come out.” John lives in her building
and he has helped her out before when her car was in
a jam. He seemed like a pleasant person and always
willing to help.

“I’ve already called him and I didn’t get an answer,”
says her husband.

“Well, after you pick up the kids, call him again,”
says Darlene as she picks up her book, says good-bye
and starts reading again. After about two minutes,
Darlene puts her book down and asks herself “What am
I suppose to learn here?”

She had gotten in the habit of questioning herself
when things go wrong in her life. “What am I suppose
to learn with this lesson?” she thought. Don’t leave
home without gas, she thought as she laughed to herself.
No, seriously, the lesson, she said, is to stop
procrastinating. She knew she had a big problem
with procrastinating. This was God trying to teach
her a lesson. That you can’t put off till tomorrow,
what you have to do today. Thanks God, she says,
as she realizes her lesson.

Just then, a car pulls up behind her.

As she looks out the rear view mirror,
she sees a woman pulling up.

As the woman gets closer to the car door,
Darlene opens her door and smiles.

“Hello.”

“Hi,” says the woman. “What’s the matter?
Are you stuck?”

“Yes,” says Darlene. “Well, actually, I’m a
little embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve run
out of gas.”

“Oh,” laughs the woman. “I drove by and saw you
sitting there and I thought to myself, isn’t that
Darlene sitting over there?”

As Darlene hears the woman say her name, she is
taken aback. She searches her memory to see whom
this woman is and how does she know her name?

“Excuse me,” Darlene says, looking very confused.
“Do I know you?”

“I’m John’s wife, Trina.”

“Oh, my goodness,” says Darlene. Darlene has seen
this woman a million times. They live in the same
building. However, she has only seen her in her
car behind tinted windows. Each morning, they leave
for work at the same time, and oftentimes they return
back home from work at the same time. They have always
waved at each other but Darlene has never really looked
at John’s wife before. She was always quite quiet and
kept to herself. John, on the other hand, was very
friendly and personable.

Darlene thanked God for sending her an angel.

Trina leaves and soon returns with gas in a container.

As they put the gas in the car, Trina tells Darlene
that she works about 10 minutes away but has NEVER
taken that way home before. She said that her
JC Penney bill was due and she hadn’t mailed it in,
which she ALWAYS does. But if she put it in the mail
today, she risked her payment being late. So, as she
was driving home, she got the idea to go to the mall
and pay her bill. Because she went to the mall, she
took another way home.

Darlene works directly across the street from the mall.

Trina also told her that she was lucky her car broke
down where it did because she was in the center divider
before the highway and easily seen. If she had made it
to the highway and pulled over, she would have never
noticed her sitting on the side since the highway has
five lanes.

COINCIDENCE that Trina went to pay her bill that day?

I don’t think so.

I know that it was all God’s plan.

Darlene had a lesson to learn and God was going to
teach it to her.

He didn’t want her too badly hurt by her experience
so the minute she learned her lesson, he sent help.

This is how God works in your life.

Yes, there will be trials and tribulations
--some big, some not so big.

But they only make us stronger.

ACTION POINT: When you are hit with a trial or tribulation, STOP, take a
second and ask yourself, what is God trying to teach me here? What
lesson am I to learn from this experience?

Then listen to your spirit. What is it telling you?

There is a lesson in every trial that happens in our life. And until you
LEARN from your trials and tribulations they will continuously repeat
themselves in different situations.

Ever wonder why you find yourself in a bad relationship and finally get
the courage to leave the relationship only to find someone else and go
through the same exactly trials with that person? The only difference is
the person to whom you are experiencing it with.

That is because you have refused to learn your lesson. God is strict
that way. He’s not going to let you off easy. As a matter of fact, if
you don’t learn the lesson, the trials will become bigger and bigger and
bigger.
If you learn your lesson and vow not to repeat it, you won’t. Yes, more
trials may come, but life will become easier for you.

Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

I know what the results will be.
 

Dawn Fields is a motivational speaker, author and coach. She has an amazing way of reaching you with her down-to-earth style and her ability to make the impossible seem possible. Sign up for her FREE weekly newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:yourlifespurpose-subscribe@topica.com.