Bumps In The Road

You're motoring along, on the journey of a lifetime or just your mundane daily path, when you're forced to stop. Perhaps your tire is flat or your engine needs a tuneup. Maybe there's a sign reading "no blue cars beyond this point," and since you're in a blue car, you're stuck. Perhaps the pothole you couldn't avoid has jostled both you and the car too much for you to continue. In any of these cases, you have essentially hit a bump in the road.
 
Even if we don't drive anywhere, we are not strangers to bumps in the road. Most of us, however, ARE strangers to seeing the bumps as bumps. We're moving along in our lives, and we get sick, or we get fired, or we have to deal with a misbehaving child or a miscalculated bill. We come to a screeching halt on what we thought was a smooth journey, and in that moment, we are sure that the journey is over forever. We will never work again, we will never be well again, we will go down in history as "bad parent of the year." The thing is, just like the "roadblocks" we encounter when driving, the things that slow us down in life don't have to stop us forever. If we are stopped in our tracks for not being suited for or allowed in a situation, we can (and should) still move on to a situation (job, club, team) where we fit better. If we are sidelined by illness, it doesn't mean we can't get back up after some rest and medication. If our kids aren't perfect, we can revel in the fact that they are simply part of the imperfect world, rather that blaming ourselves for their missteps. If we are just feeling jostled by life, we can take a beat to get our bearings, rather than retreat from trying again.
 
On our daily journeys, both the big ones and the small ones, there are all sorts of bumps in the road. We can let them be permanent roadblocks that immobilize us, or we can choose to pause briefly, and then move past them. Most of us would not turn back from a trip that we had planned, just because of a bump in the road, so why is it that we so quickly retreat after bumps in the road of life? We can often get past them (and usually learn a little something about "road skills" along the way).
 
Got fired, got sick, got frustrated, got stuck? If you view it as just a bump in the road, there's a good chance you'll be motoring along again sooner than you think.