January 29, 2021
Evaluations
This week and next week are skills testing weeks at gym. Evaluations of skills each gymnast has and their ability to move up or stay in their current level to solidify their knowledge.
Most of the time, the coaches catch when their student gymnast gets enough skills and strength or knowledge to move up, but sometimes it takes a “skills test” for a gymnast to show off or put a little more power into her actions!
This made me think about life.
Life is full of levels.
Sometimes we just move through them seamlessly. You know, like gliding from toddlerhood to preschool, or moving from 9th to 10th grade. High school to college is a little more of a push – this is like an evaluation. Are you ready? Well, time is here – which choice do you make?
In our personal growth, we tend to move slowly. It’s when a climatic event causes us to evaluate ourselves that we discover strengths we didn’t know we had or weaknesses we thought we didn’t have. Your eldest child going to college and you are tossed into the whirlwind of various choices, plans, financial issues, helping your young adult navigate stress (praying you can do that well, because she is expressing what you are internalizing!), and believing that a way will be made.
This time you have to view as a positive change. You have to realize that this temporary negative appearance will prove to be the lifetime starting point for your young adult. Your attitude through this is your “evaluation,” your young adult will be taking notes on and remembering. (Everyone else in your household is also watching!)
Sometimes a life “evaluation” is others watching how you navigate troubled waters. Like the death of your father, your sister, your close friend, your child. Losing someone you treasure. That despair can allow you to create a pit to lose yourself in. Or you can look up and pull on the strength that only comes from Jesus. This evaluation is never something we want to face.
Evaluation week went along with my study: Examine yourself to see what is good and right; remove that which leads toward darkness.
(My paraphrase again, I summarized the page-long study to that line. Most of the verses linked all boiled down to that same line as my brain interpreted them.) I imagine darkness to be the depth of one’s soul without Jesus. Since Jesus is Light and darkness is the absence of light, that makes the most sense to me.
See, when trouble hits, I can either turn inside myself and go into darkness or look outside and reach up to Jesus. In Him there is strength to endure everything.
Life has taught me that.
My “evaluations” have proven it.
I pray I always choose to reach up. I want those watching me during “skills testing” to be led to Jesus. That is my goal.
Crazy writer’s brain that sees the little flyer on our desk that reads “skills testing weeks” and launches into deep thoughts… hopefully these wandering thoughts help lift you up!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart
