when everything seems to be going wrong

Right now I live with a family that I babysit for, they are very gracious in allowing me to basically be part of the family. They are going through a season of struggles right now, and its good that I can be here to help but also hard to watch. I mean, I'm 23, I'm just figuring out the struggles of "real life" and how to live a life with out school, and be a responsible member of the adult world.

Today I was reminded while talking with the mom of this family what life is like in a season of struggles. I'm an optimist, so even while I am struggling with a whole lot going on in my life, I still naturally look for all that is good and right in the world and choose to focus on that rather than all the negative around me. So its hard for me to see people struggling with things that life throws at them and have the right understanding to help them through it. Today the best I could come up with this as this mom is just stressing about one thing after the other, was that as soon as you let one little (or huge) thing stress you out and you don't bounce up ready for the next thing, you start to feel like you'll never get up like things will never be right again. Because as you slowly get up from a fall something else can hit you before you ever fully recover, and then something else and something else. So it just feels like you can't win and you begin to feel defeat. However, if you'd just hopped right up the first time, no matter how hard it may seem, you'll be on your feet ready for the next one and it won't feel like it hit as quickly.

Maybe this doesn't even make sense, but I just picture this guy (he's a stick figure) and he is running on a I guess its a track I'm not sure though. Anyways, he's running and he sees a hurtle, but by the time he gets to the hurtle, its taller than he thought it would be and he doesn't make it over. Well instead of getting straight up and continuing on, to find out what is next. He takes his time and kinda crawls a little before getting up and walking and then starting to run again. Only by the time he starts running again, a lot of time has passed but he can't seem to stop thinking about this hurtle that he missed. And then he's not looking where he's going and he falls in a hole. (this is a very dangerous kind of track thing in my head.) So now he's lying in a hole going, what is going on, and again taking his time to crawl out. Well as he gets his hands to the top to get out, a rock falls and knocks him back down. He finally gets out of the hole and he runs into a tree, and so on and so on. And his path just seems to be the only one with all these obstacles on it, I mean he looks at the other people running and he doesn't see them having a problem. He doesn't know that bob 5 lanes over, ran into a tree while he was trying to get out of his hole. He seems to think the world is against him and totally for everyone else. But maybe if he'd just gotten straight up from that first hurtle, and stopped worrying about it he would have seen the hole and then seen the tree. Its worth a shot at least.