By My Side.

Yesterday, I was in such a terrible mood. I had tons of work to do but it was all boring to me, and things just weren’t goin my way. I had to endure the worst art critique of my life, which consisted of my teacher embarrassing myself and other students in the class with her comments about our work, smiling the whole time as she did so. It was miserable. After a 20 minute vent-session via phone to my mother, I got in my car and just drove. I was still fuming and so offended and hurt as I thought back over my day, when suddenly the song on the radio caught my attention. It was Tenth Avenue North’s “By Your Side.”

A few weeks ago I made a couple worship-themed CD’s for my car for those times after I leave church or just feel really close to God and don’t feel like listening to the shallow crap on the radio. So I happened to have left one of them in my CD player, and in that moment those lyrics just spoke to me. I paused and heard the lines:

And I'll be by your side
Wherever you fall
In the dead of night
Whenever you call
And please don't fight
These hands that are holding you
My hands are holding you

How great is that?! like ah, that certainly turned my mood around. Or at least made me stop and think about whether what I was so hurt and offended by was really worth it. I mean yes, what she did was rude and unnecessary, but the moment I started to listen to these words, I realized that none of that mattered. It didn’t have to bother me so much, it wasn’t even that big of a deal. No matter how upset or angry I got towards that lady, it couldn’t change a single thing that had just taken place. No matter how much I wanted to take back that class, I couldn’t.

And the thing is, God knew that class was going to go that terribly. He knew what the teacher was going to say, and He knew how I was going to feel. So I figure, why let something that was totally planned defeat me? Why let that make me hate art class even more than I already do, and why let that ruin my day? Clearly God is on my side and is ready to take me into His arms and comfort me no matter what is going on in my life, so why take this one event so personally?

Needless to say, God gave me a nice little reality check.