Deployment Diaries Part 2: There Are Good Days, and Then There Are Bad Days

There are good days, and then there are bad days. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell what kind of day tomorrow will bring.

The good days feel exceptionally well.  

You wake up feeling refreshed, and motivated to tackle the day ahead. The hot cup of coffee tastes perfect, the scrambled eggs from the Dining Facility are cooked just right, and your computer turns on with little issue from the network or servers.

Nothing can stop you now.

Then, there are bad days.

These are the days when you wake up feeling "off."  You can't help the feeling, a bad omen that today is not going to go well. You wake up exhausted as if you had a restless night with little REM. Your body aches like you've slept on a hardwood floor with a flat pillow between your head and arm.

Your soul struggles to understand the emotions that flow through your veins.

Today will be a bad day.

Tears well up in your eyes as you try to discern what exactly you are feeling. You can sense that your fuse is short.

No time for jokes.

Your coffee tastes bitter, and the carton eggs are too runny.

You go to work, and your computer needs to be restarted 10 times before outlook decides to start working.

It's barely 9 o'clock, and you already want to go back to bed. You think—today will be a bad day, but tomorrow should be better.

But the day doesn’t end there. You message your significant other, and they haven’t got the memo that today will be a bad day.

Everything that can be taken out of context is. Queue the silly arguments that don’t even matter.

Every emotion that you have managed to push aside for the past few weeks overwhelm you, like waves crashing alongside a rocky cliff.

There is no break.

You try to fight against the current, in hopes of finding some salvation, but you find yourself drowning even deeper into the ocean of confusing emotions.

Today has been a bad day.

But there is hope in tomorrow—tomorrow surely will be better, because your current situation does not dictate the outcome of your future.

Sometimes you need bad days to remind you to appreciate the good days.

Do not confuse the bad days as a sign of weakness. These are the days you actually work your hardest, but ultimately it is not about your strength or your weakness.

“Never blame any day in your life. Good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, and the worst days give you a lesson.” 
― Sukhraj S. Dhillon

There are moments where you are too strong to need any help. You are self-sufficient and relish in the idea that you can do it all. Those moments tend to be the good days.

But you need a reminder that even in your strength, you are weak. You need Him during the good days just as much as the bad days. Don’t forget it. Imagine just how strong you could be if you relinquished control enough to allow the Spirit to work through you?

Then there are moments when you feel weak and have no control over anything-Murphy has decided to extend his visit for way too long—those moments are the bad days. Yet it is in these moments that you find God giving you the grace and strength to get through the storm.

So, maybe these bad days that feel all-consuming are actually preparing us for the good.

Truth of the matter is, whether it’s a good day or a bad day, you always need help.