Walking through the life of a human being is often more challenging than not. The silver lining of it all is that God gave us everything we need to make it from our first breath to our last. Isaiah 42:16 AMP offers the following promise, “I will lead the blind by a way they do not know; I will guide them in paths that they do not know. I will make darkness into light before them And rugged places into plains. These things I will do [for them], And I will not leave them abandoned or undone.”

It is easy to look back on our lives and focus on our mistakes. It is easy to see the mud, while ignoring the field of blooming wild flowers above it. I love to take pictures, and I have come to realize most of my best photos come from dramatic and cloudy skies. No matter how things appear, God never leaves us. On the contrary, He is walking us through every heartbeat. Satan wants us focused on the mud. He wants us to believe that our life is dirty and it’s all because God keeps bringing rain down upon our heads.

God needs us to remember that the flowers must have rain in order to grow. Yes, that will create some mud, but when the rain stops, the ground will dry out, we can wash ourselves off, and sit back to enjoy the beauty God brought us in the wake of the rain. Sometimes, we may feel as though other people have pushed us down in the mud, and so we should keep our distance from them, just in case they decide to push us down again. However, we must consider the possibility that they were tripped by the guile of the enemy, and had no intention of taking us down with them. We need to know when to walk away, yes, but also when to help the other person stand back up, and then help one another stand stronger because of the mutual love and support we share.

Regardless of the circumstances, whether your the one who got pushed, or the one who did the pushing, the only one who wins when we leave each other down in the mud is the one who put us there in the first place. There are few people in this world who will truly love us for who we are, and who will choose to stand beside us, even in the face of our biggest mistakes. When you find one of those people, don’t let them slip away without a fight. Help each other up out of the mud, help each other wash off the dirt, and spend time together tending the flowers meant to grow from the rain.