Walking Away

As I have mentioned before life is busy sometimes we find ourselves walking away from things, walking away from a path that has been laid out for us. It's not always intentional but it can lead to playing the catch up game for a while I learnt this lesson recently and I want to what I learnt about walking away,staying on the path you are on and on playing the catch up game.

Now I am a Sims player, I love making my little families and their houses watching them grow and develop in to the best little simulated people they can be. A quick run down on the Sims for those who have never played it: Each Sim is different they each have their own traits (3 by adulthood) that make up their personality. If you have the Parenthood pack like me as children and teens are growing up they learn character value traits these can be good (responsible, compassionate, etc) or bad (irresponsible, insensitive, etc) depending on how you raise them. Sims can have good or bad relationships with those around them depending on the interactions they have with other Sims and they must stay on top of their school/work in order to succeed. Sounds a lit like real life doesn't it. I enjoy watching my sims learn and grow, I put a lot of effort into how I raise them so when things go wrong... lets just say it's not something I enjoy watching.

So I was playing the Sims this one day with a family I had been playing with for a few weeks, I had worked really hard on their lives. The dad Marc had a level 7 job in business, the mum Lucy had been a stay at home mum and had published a few books; and their twin daughters Alexis and Sophia were A grade students in high school, both had part time jobs, were within range to get good character value traits and had a good group of friends. Now one day I saved the game, hit the play button to start playing again when I got a phone call; without thinking I got up and walked away from my computer, I completely forgot to pause the game.

So I had walked away from the game, it couldn't have been more than twenty five minutes (about a week in game time) but when I came back the family I had worked so hard on was on the brink of destruction. Marc had been demoted, he and Lucy were ready to get a divorce, both had had affairs, nether of them liked each other anymore and couldn't speak without fighting. As for Alexis and Sophia they had both been demoted too, both were down to a C grade and they had fallen out of range to get any positive character values. Alexis had also had a romantic relationship with one of her neighbours, the son of the man Lucy had an affair with. and on top of all of that there had been a fire in the house so the entire kitchen and most of the living area were ruined. So with twenty five minutes all of my hard work with the family had vanished. Now I knew I could just come out of the game without saving and go back to a time when the family were all good again but I decided against it; instead I worked with them as they were slowly regaining their relationships and positions. It took me an our and a half to got their life back to the way it had been, over double the time it took to cause the mess but in that day I learnt something important. You see many people I know wont play the sims because they see it as 'playing God' and I do understand their mindset, I personally see it as only a game I would never compare myself to God in or out of the game. However I have learnt something of God through playing and that is this, God never walks away from our lives. I can hear you saying "is that it? You tell us this whole long story to tell us something we already know?" But this honestly changed my view on many things.

Please don't mistake me as equating myself to God when I say these things I learnt, I say it only from the point that I am the one taking care of my Sims and guiding them. The first I learnt that without God life gets out of control, I learnt that life can become messy so quickly. One week in Sims time, (now granted their pregnancy are 3 Sim days so if we were looking at their time as human time I would say they had been playing unattended for about a year and nine months,) and their lives were almost ruined. What if I had been away another five minutes who knows what would have happened then? If I had been there guiding them the negative changes in the game would almost certainly never have happened. Now here in the real world we know that God will never walk away from us, never leave us to our own devices even for twenty five minutes. However sometimes life still gets messy, still gets out of control and I know I myself have said in these times "God where are you? Why have you left me?" The truth is he never left me he was there, but was I? Looking back over the last year at the times where it felt that it got the most out of control I notice a pattern, I wasn't walking with God. Now I'm not saying that life isn't hard even when we are waking with God, I'm not saying it cant feel out of control ; but for the most part in my experience even when it is out of control you can feel safe and secure knowing that while it's out of your control it is within Gods. So what I learnt was God will never walk away but we can, when we do and when we are apart from Jesus our life can fall in to disarray; by the time we get back to the Lord we have to start playing the catch up game which brings me on to the next thing I learnt.

The next thing I learnt was getting back on track takes way longer than just staying on the track. It took over double the time I had been away to get my family back to where they were. If they had been on track when I had come back that hour and a half could had lead to promotions, new books, new friendships and better skills instead it had to be spent working their butts of to re attain positions they had already held, gaining back relationships they had lost and breaking off relationships that never should have begun in the first place. Getting them back to the plan I had been working on took time and dedication but even when we were back to were we started there were things that just weren't the same; Marc and Lucy kept getting text messages from those they'd had affairs with asking them on dates. As for Alexis I didn't break up her relationship letting it play out cause who knows maybe she had found her future husband, but alas it ended in heart break (he tried flirting with Sophia in front of Alexis, thankfully Sophia wanted nothing to do with him) making her too sad to go to work causing her to slip even further away from her previous position. Staying on the path that God had set out for us is way better that playing catch up. Letting him guide us in the way we should go is the best thing that we can do because his plan for our lives is the greatest plan, we aren't going to get any better than that anywhere else.

So in conclusion: God wont walk away, we shouldn't walk away from Him and staying on the path He has put us on is defiantly for the best. He knows the best thing for us, even though it can be hard to listen and follow his commands. When He tells us to work on that skill when we don't feel like it or when we just want to go home but He is telling is to stay at work for those extra fifteen minutes to get things ready from tomorrow. There are so many opportunities in our day when we could ignore him, but there's an equal amount of opportunities to listen to him, walk with him and stay on the path he has laid out for you. I pray that over the next week you think about this, that you walk with the Lord and follow his plan. Try to keep a note of when you feel him guiding you in your every day life, I think it may surprise you how many times you notice it once you start looking for it. Lastly there was one other thing I learnt through all this The third and final thing I learnt from this whole experience is to make sure I pause the game before walking away from the screen!

What do you think of my Sims journey? Has it taught you anything? Do you think there is more to be learnt here? I would love to hear your thoughts