What is your foundation made of?

A man gets stuck in a pit. He's not sure how he got there, but is sure that he is stuck. 
When he looks up, he can see the daylight, but he can't see an easy way to get to it. When he looks down, he sees loose ground. 

He is a fit man, a healthy man and he is a man with two choices. 

One: He can sit down and stay there. As he sits, he is filled with a cross between boredom and panic and frustration and regret and fear. At first, they are manageable, just about bearable, but as time goes on, those things start to eat him up, to play on his mind, eventually sending him into a frenzy. He starts to dig, to shovel with his bare hands, desperately trying to find the end, the solid surface, the way out. After a while, the daylight gets further and further away and all he sees, all he knows is the darkness around him.
Or, two: he can use his hands to climb. He can use any roots or stones as footholds and he can use all the strength he can muster to pull himself towards the light. When he reaches the top, he collapses at the surface, catching his breath, with a smile on his face that says, "ah, light, freedom, breath, solid ground." And now that he is out of the pit, he wonders anxiously about how to stop himself falling in again.

There have been times when I've felt like I'm in a pit. Most of the time I haven't known how I got there and in those times, it's been a long struggle back. Some times, I have sat there for months, making my home in the pit, ignoring people who want to throw me a rope, kicking at the ground, saying "it's not fair". And it's taken a fight from deep within, a change of circumstances, the right person at the right time.

Since I got offered the publishing contract a few weeks ago, I've been floating slightly off the ground. I've been delighted, thrilled, excited. And scared. Scared that when the exciting feeling fades, I could go back into the pit.

I always seem to be aware of it when good things happen, when circumstances make me smile, because I think I'm aware of how temporary those things can be. And I don't want to live life from high to high, dream to dream, only being up when something good happens. Because that is a shaky ground to walk on. 

I want to have a more firm foundation, a foundation that is on more than good news and fun times. I want it to be based on faith, hope, joy, love...permanent things...things that remain.

I think that's a choice. I think those are things that are always there, always on offer, but  we have to choose whether we want them and how much we let them form our foundation. If we have a foundation based on how other people treat us, how many friends we have, how we look, even how we feel, we are going to encounter a lot more pits that are a lot harder to climb out of.

The more solid the foundation we choose, the fewer pits we find ourselves in and the easier it is to pull ourselves up out of them when we do find ourselves there. 

Choose the important things, the firm things, the things that remain when all else fades.