Trade Up

 My son Micah frequently comes home with new phrases.  He uses these phrases to state common things we would say—honestly, half of the time I am trying to translate them and figure out what he is really getting at. As I mentioned in my letter to him, Micah has a way of exposing me.  Probably like most kids his honesty it’s uncanny and gets me every time. 

So today he again was talking about how one friend was “trading up” for another friend.  Like most kindergartens and other fellow elementary students—trading up is a part of life.  You don’t like a friend; you just play with another one.  You get bored of the toys you are playing with, you just pick from another out of the toy bin.  There isn’t much of an alliance or endurance. 

 It got me thinking—how many times have I “traded up” in hopes of something better.  And in the process giving up on the one thing that could make me grow.  I wish I could say I could count these moments on one hand; unfortunately, it’s more like three or four hands.  

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” – 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul writes I did, I fought, I endured…I didn’t trade up—but I stayed the course set before me no matter what came my way, no matter how it looked, I kept faith in Jesus.

As a Christian, I find I tend to trade up then endure.  In fact I have like zero tolerance in many areas of my life…good or bad.  But I see it happen often.  We don’t endure, we move on, call it God speaking and who can argue with that. Often pride takes place of humility and instead of working through the process of being trained to endure we put on pride and call it a day.  

Ironically I have personally wanted to trade up in some areas, but I have been working through the struggle to endure.  I look at a few areas in my life, shake my head (at myself), and think guess I will try again tomorrow.  If you have had the pleasure to spend at least 10 minutes of undivided time with me I am sure I have allude to the discontent with certain areas of my life (and if not, now you know it).  What is really comes down to is this race, journey, life (whatever you’d like to call it) looks nothing like I thought it would look like.  I think somewhere deep inside I thought I would achieve perfection before my “real” life would actually begin and guess what I haven’t.  So here I sit and ponder how I will push through daydreaming with the very dangerous what if and I should have, go get back into the race.