Stretching

I've been doing a lot of stretching lately.  After my hamstring pulling event of two weeks ago, I am always stopping throughout the day to stretch.  The initial stretch hurt a little bit, but as I continued I found  the stretching felt good, improved my pain, and I'm sure is making me so flexible.  As I stood with my foot on a table the other day stretching, I thought this is what God does to us in life too.  In the past several years, he has stretched me, and although painful at times, has helped me to be more flexible and to grow.  When life gets frustrating I often find myself venting to some amazing friends.  Ironically they always reply with "God is stretching you".  Enough already!  I think I've stretched enough is what I want to say, but God has other ideas. He has things to teach me and sometimes those lessons need to be painful and not so pleasant. But like stretching, the outcome changes me to be a richer person and I hope a wiser one too.  If I had my choice, I'd avoid those stretching moments in life.  For like my pulled hamstring, they hurt. But I know too that if I didn't stretch, I'd never grow, change or learn.  It's the tough things in life that mold us the most. I've seen that in others and I've known that in my own life too.  So I've been doing a lot of stretching lately, and my guess is that after I no longer feel the pain in my hamstring, God will still be pulling on me, stretching me, making me who I am suppose to be.