How to Get Back on Track and Love Life

If it has been a long time since bowling was a favorite Friday night league sport, we can relate. Our bowling ball, however, is probably somewhere in the back of the closet collecting dust. “One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball.” (Don Carter/golftrainingand practicegear.com)

We started thinking about how life is like throwing a bowling ball: it often falls into the gutter and needs someone to get it out and onto the right path. That was always one frustrating drawback about bowling. And our lives may feel that way too at times. We just need some help getting back on track and pointed in the right direction!

Confidence and Feeling Good

Now that we are single-again and mostly on our own, it is going to take lots of practice and trial and error before we are good at it. Anyone great at any creative dream spends many days and even years learning what will work best for them. It is not just automatic, and we should not expect instant success.

“I’ll have you know I threw a gutter ball and I only cried for twenty minutes.” (SpongeBob character/pinterest.com)

Sometimes, it is to our advantage to seek ideas, suggestions, and guidance from those professionals who specialize in our situations. If not in person, then at the very least, we need to visit the library and start reading about how to navigate our new lives. There are so many books on the topic it will take a while to get to the bottom of whatever is holding us back from moving forward. But we can do it!

This kind of effort will give us plenty of confidence and a “feel-good” approach to our life. We will find out how to turn a depressed state of mind into a more optimistic way of living. We’ll find ourselves smiling more. People will begin looking at us and wonder how in the world we are handling things with such a wonderful attitude.

Admittedly, we will all need a little boost once in a while. We are not saying that life is going to suddenly grow perfect roses and we will never need any instruction again. Unfortunately, life just isn’t that simple, and we don’t want to lead anyone down the fantasy of a “yellow brick road.”

We would rather get more real and suggest three views to start us off on the right path. Any of these can be adjusted, added to, ignored, or deleted. It’s up to each of us what to do. But one thing we sincerely hope no one does is simply do nothing.

• Find one of these books (or similar) to start:

Living Unbroken: Reclaiming Your Life and Your Heart After Divorce (Tracie Miles)

Living and Loving After Betrayal (Steven Stosny Ph.D.)

• Speaking about roses:

Plant one or two rose bushes in celebration of a new life.

• Take a day trip (check with local college) and make it an adventure with a friend.

Best Told Stories

Our best reference is the Holy Bible. For some reason, there are those women in the world right now who have a false belief that God does not care for females. But that is a total lie and is supported by those who have not read the Bible at all.

Of course, God created males and females for a reason, and he delights in both. Some of the best stories are about those courageous women of the Bible whom God loved. We suggest picking up a copy of the Bible (or purchasing one online) and look up these names: Esther, Deborah, Ruth, Naomi, Mary (mother of Jesus), Rachel, and Mary Magdalene among hundreds of others.

Try completing this sentence with your name: God has always loved _____.

“Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life” (Proverbs 4:13 NIV).