Progress in life is not just straight up or straight forward for that matter!
Sometimes I think life is like a game of Snakes and Ladders. One day you are plodding along and whoosh you’ve shot ahead. Then just as easily you land on a snake and can be back where you started. But that’s how you play the game and that’s how you complete the game! A series of slow movements forward, some ladders to shoot up on and some snakes to take you down. That’s the game. And that’s a great picture of life – up’s and downs. The question is how do we handle it.
Bear Grylls, who in 1998 was the youngest Briton to climb Mt Everest, provided this insight – “The process of the climb meant that we would have to ascend then descend the mountain continually. This would allow our bodies to acclimatize to a high point, before coming back to Base Camp to recover. It is how you climb a mountain. You reach the threshold of altitude that your body can cope with, then come back down to rest. Then up a bit higher to acclimatize to a greater height and then back down again… They say that to climb Everest successfully, you actually climb the mountain five times over – in the process of going up and down.”
If we can grasp this concept we will realise that a setback does not necessarily constitute failure. We may get frustrated of going back a few steps. But it enables God to move us further ahead and faster the next time. Don’t allow any set back to become bigger than your come back!
GOD wastes nothing: He has devised a system in which distasteful discarded manure becomes valuable fertilizer to make things grow. Clue in! (Sy Rogers)
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
A failure is not your final destination. When you are down to nothing God is up to something! Remember that a rubber band is not usable until it is stretched, a tea kettle sounds best when it is up to its neck in hot water and a wheel barrel doesn’t work unless it is pushed
Hang in there. Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up. – (Bear Grylls)
Blue Skies & Lollipops 
Great post and includes one of my favourite sayings, that nothing is wasted in God.
We do travel from A to B but life means we go via most of the other letters of the alphabet. It’s how we learn, how we relate to others and how God instructs and trains us, through life itself.
Thank you! feel blessed by yr encouragement! Totally, that’s a great analogy A to B via C,d….x,y,z! Helps to see that the detours are part of life! 🙂