Because I’m learning to sail my ship.

That sentence struck me in a book I recently read, words spoken by the heroine’s aunt when she was explaining how she chose to handle the bad times in her life.

As I write this today, we’re in the middle of a tropical storm. It’s raining like crazy, winds picking up and gusting all around. There are tornado watches in several areas around us. Flooding in a lot of places around us has already been reported, but fortunately where we live, we very seldom experience that unless the storm drains are full of debris.

So I began to think, how do we sail our ship safely when those proverbial storms come against us?

Certainly during a tropical storm like I just described, we don’t take our boat out. We secure it, batten down the hatches, as the saying goes, and either ride out the storm on board, or go to higher ground, knowing we’ve done everything we can to keep that ship safe during the storm. It may come out of it with no damage, or it may end up with some repairs needing to be done, but in the end, it’s back in good shape and ready for the next adventure.

So we sail on, through sunny skies, with a few storms once in awhile coming our way that we have to navigate through. But as we continue our voyage, we learn how to best navigate through those unexpected squalls and storms. Sometimes we come out unscathed, and sometimes we need to make a few more repairs and adjustments. But we learn from each encounter.

Sometimes the bad times in our lives are brief; a few days, a few weeks, and we get through them, using what we’ve learned in previous situations. We step forward knowing we’ve conquered another situation which was just in reality a small blip on our radar. A small problem to quickly overcome.

But sometimes in our lives we figuratively encounter that major storm, a nor’easter or even a hurricane. One that seems to almost come out of nowhere, giving us little or no time to prepare. But those are the times we do what we can as best we can. We pull on our experiences along the way, our inner strengths that have developed over the years, and we roll up our sleeves and put our lives back together as best we can. Sometimes better than before, sometimes almost the same, and other times we carry a few battle scars with us that we learn to live with and make the most of.

Because we’ve earned them. We’ve fought our battles, and we’ve overcome them. We’ve learned how to best sail our ship, the only one we’ve been given, and we hoist up our sails and go on once again. Maybe better, maybe a little worse for wear, but never defeated.

Where’s your ship headed today? Is it in the best shape possible or does it need a few repairs? If it does, get them made and then set your course for the next adventure.