Will You Be a Potato or an Egg?

Last Sunday I heard the most intriguing analogy on how we choose to handle our trials.  During the weekly television broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word, Lloyd Newel described a pot of boiling water, and how if you put an egg and a potato into a pot of boiling water one will become hard, and the other soft.  Interesting how the same boiling water has such an opposite effect on the egg and potato.

Life is often like a pot of boiling water-- hot, turbulent and painful.  Do the difficulties in our lives soften us, or do they harden us?

I knew two women, both of whom had gone through very difficult marriages.  The first woman had been softened by her trials.  She was compassionate towards others and their trials.  She understood pain.  She sponsored and helped women around her in similar situations to get through the road she had already trod and survived.  She chose to live a positive life.  Though her life was not easy, she looked for the good all around her.  She was happy and joyful despite hard circumstances.

The second woman unfortunately had slowly become more and more bitter over the years because of her difficult marriage.  She felt she was a victim.  She felt that life had not been fair to her.  She rarely smiled.  She was difficult to be around because of her negativity.  Even the good things in her life seemed negative to her.  She could not seem to see the good.

When we look for the good in our daily lives, that is what we will see.  When we look for the bad, that is what we will see.  Both are there.  You will see what you choose to see.  When I have chosen to look for the good through my trials, it has not changed my circumstances, but it definitely has changed how I felt and how I responded.

We all have trials.  We all have difficulties in our lives.  We all have those times when it feels like we are living in boiling water.  How wonderful it is that we have the great gift of being able to choose how to respond to our circumstances.  What will you choose?  Will you be a potato or an egg?