All Things Work For The Good - But Don't Get It Twisted

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, lovers and seekers, those who are lost and those who are found.

Tonight, I will be reading from the compilation titled, Outlaw Creative: (the geometry of life). And, tonight's reading is titled, 'All Things Work For The Good - But Don't Get It Twisted.'

That being said, let's get started.

All things work for the good, but don't get it twisted. Oh, no doubt. Life can be rough.

It throws hands, some days, full fists, and you don't always walk away clean. Pain shows up uninvited, and it doesn't wait for your permission to settle in. There's loss, disappointment, days where you question whether getting out of bed was worth the stretch. And, in the middle of that, someone hits you with, all things work together for good. You want to nod, sure, but some days, you just stare. That truth, if it's truth at all, doesn't always fit easy. But still, I ain't gonna hate on it.

Hate's got a way of poisoning the ground you stand on. You carry it too long, and before you know it, nothing good grows. You become bitter, suspicious, closed off. You forget how to breathe. So, even when I don't like what's happening, even when I want to cuss it, fight it, walk out on it, I don't drag hate with me. Not because I'm noble, but because I know what hate does. It's corrosive.

It kills the soil of your soul. And I want things to grow. So, yes, all things work for the good. Not just the bright things. Not just the wins. Not just the goodbyes that come easy or the changes you prayed for. All things.

The heartbreak, the betrayal, the things that didn't make sense at the time, and still don't. The things you'd give anything to undo. They work. Not instantly, not painlessly. But they work, and they work for the good. Not for your comfort, not for your ego, not even for your plan. But for the good.

The long view. The real kind of good that makes you. Now, let's be real. Just because something works for good, doesn't mean it feels good. There's a gap there. That's the tension. And some days, it's not just hard to believe that.

It's hard to give yourself to that idea. To let go of the why me, and lean into maybe this is part of something bigger. It takes something. Maturity. Surrender.

Maybe just time. But it's not blind faith. It's gritty, grown up, earn it in the trenches kind of faith. The kind that's honest enough to say, this sucks, and I hate it, but I'm not going to hate on it. See people love to quote all things work together for good. But they often forget the rest. Forget the grit in it.

Forget the struggle embedded in those words. They think it's a bumper sticker, a fortune cookie, a mantra to make things feel okay. But if you've lived long enough, you know better. You know that all things includes the gut punches. It includes the silent seasons. It includes the breakups and breakdowns. And it especially includes the things that made you feel like giving up.

You look back at your life, really look, and you see a pattern. The closed doors that kept you from settling. The losses that made space for deeper growth. The jobs that didn't work out forcing you into something better. The people who left that you thought you couldn't live without, until you found out you could.

Were they fun? No. Would you sign up for them again? Not a chance. But did they work? Yes, somehow, eventually. Sometimes you only see it in hindsight.

Sometimes the work is silent, slow, invisible. But it's happening. And here's the real catch. It's not about liking the process. Nobody's asking you to fake it. You don't have to slap a smile on pain or pretend the dark nights don't hit hard. You don't have to enjoy the struggle to respect what it teaches.

You can say, I hate this, but I trust something good is coming from it. That's not weakness. That's courage. That's the kind of honesty that doesn't just survive pain. It transforms through it. We live in a culture obsessed with control. We want everything to make sense.

Everything to go to plan. But life doesn't take direction from us. It unfolds. Messy. Unpredictable. Unfair. And yet, somehow it works.

Not perfectly. Not how we imagined. But for the good. That doesn't mean everything is good. Some things are just bad.

Period. But the mystery is that even those bad things can be woven into something meaningful. Something redemptive. Something useful. That's the kind of truth that doesn't demand you like what's happening. It just asks you to stay open. To not shut down.

To not let bitterness turn your soil to stone. Because if you do, nothing good can grow. And we need good to grow. Desperately. So when I say, all things work for the good, I'm not preaching.

I'm not selling comfort. I'm telling you what I've seen. What I've lived. I'm saying it with scars, not just scriptures. Because believing that kind of truth isn't cheap. It costs you. You gotta surrender the need for clarity.

You gotta give up the fantasy of perfect outcomes. You've gotta learn how to walk with unanswered questions and still hold on to hope. And some days, you won't feel it. You'll doubt. You'll be angry. You'll want to throw the whole idea out the window. That's okay.

Let the frustration come. But don't camp out in hate. Don't stay in the because hate doesn't just poison the other person or the situation. It poisons you. It shuts down your capacity to see the beauty on the other side. It convinces you that everything is random, cruel, meaningless. And once that takes root, growth becomes impossible.

So yeah, I don't always like it. Some days I hate it. But I'm not going to hate on it. Because I want to stay soft. I want to stay open. I want to stay in the place where good can still find me. That's the choice.

Every day. Not denial. Not sugarcoating. But a decision to let life keep working. Even when I don't get it. Even when it hurts. Even when I'm tired.

All things. Not just the good things. Not just the easy days. Not just the stuff I prayed for and got. But the whole of it. The full mess.

The broken parts. The things I still don't understand. All of it. Working. Not for my control, but for the good. So yes, it's true. With that qualification I gave before, it's hard.

It hurts. But it works. And I'll take that over bitterness any day.