Sudden, Unexpected Challenges

Right now, I'm feeling a little bit frustrated because I got a pair of assignments that are due this Monday. This wouldn't normally be a problem; College students have assignments due all the time. But this time, my classmates and I weren't given the assignments until last night, giving us only three days to complete the assignments, which either involve a good deal of writing or a good deal of research.

I don't mean to complain. This situation is an anomaly, and I maintain my opinion that the teachers at my college are the best. They're smart and informative, many of them are funny, and they all care deeply about the success of their students.

I just wanted to use this experience to highlight and important and unfortunate truth: Life sometimes takes you by surprise. We're not always given a lot of advance notice when a challenge or crisis comes up in our lives. We're not always given much time to prepare ourselves. Sometimes, we just have to do what we can to react well to the challenges life throws at us. This makes resilience and flexibility as much a virtue as preparation, partly because, in situations like this, there is very little time given to prepare.

It's also a good reason to try to stay righteous, even when things are going well enough in your life that you don't feel you need any extra blessings, because you never know when you're going to need to pray for help, and when you do, it'd be nice to know that you're worthy of the help you're praying for.

Life doesn't always play nice, and it doesn't always seem fair. Sometimes, it gives you problems that it didn't warn you about. But regardless of whether it's nice and fair or not, that's life. Sometimes, we just have to roll with the punches and deal with the problems that come up, including the ones that come up suddenly and without much warning. It would be nice if we could always know what's coming and have plenty of time to prepare for it, but that's not how life works. Instead of complaining about it, it would be more productive to deal with the situation as well as we can on short notice. I'm confident that I'll complete both of the assignments adequately by the time they're due, despite having had less time to work on them than I would have liked.