Having One of Those Days

As I was rather carelessly placing a small, lop-sided stack of papers and books in the front seat of my car the other evening, an acquaintance of mine walked by, and the stack spilled out of the car onto the sidewalk, falling into a mixed up mess. "Having one of those days?" she asked. I thought it was an odd question, as she had not seen me at any other point in the day and had no idea how things had been going for me. Even though I found her comment to be slightly vexatious, I tried not to sound rude when I replied, "No, I just dropped some papers. That's all."

She was only making conversation, but I did think of how often I've heard people comment in exasperation, "it's just been one of those days," meaning something went wrong at the beginning of the day and then everything they did after that went downhill. However, there is no reason for one bad incident to bring on another bad incident, unless we begin to focus on irritations. Then annoyances can, and often do, gain control of our attitude, and attitude is what determines what kind of day we have. Don't buy into Murphy's law "if anything can go wrong, it will." (No one is really certain who Murphy was, and his "law" certainly isn't a law at all.)

It is possible to ruin an entire day by merely thinking it was spoiled from the start. It is also possible to have a productive day by not giving credence and power to minor aggravations. It's the same for "waking up in a bad mood." If our disposition is sour, it doesn't mean we have to stay in a bad humor. We are in control of our moods and attitudes; our moods are not in control of us.

The further problem with allowing bad moments to ruin our whole day, is we will be in danger of letting bad days pile up on top of each other until bad days, rather than good, rule our lives. Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us, "The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness." Maybe we should think of having "one of those days" in a new light, a day filled with God's lovingkindness, no matter how many minor inconveniences come our way.