2,543 Ways to Simplify Your Life


 As I've been reflecting week on last weeks post,  I really should have mentioned something and thoughtlessly overlooked it.  Maybe it's due to the subject matter being so intensely personal for me, or maybe I'm really that heartless.  I'm hoping not the latter...yikes!

I omitted addressing the fact that there are many difference circumstances surrounding people being put up for adoption.  Some kids find themselves in that situation at a very young age, and some in their teens.  Some are blessed enough to be adopted at birth and some are never.  The latter frequently wind up in foster care with both positive and negative experiences being possible. Even adoptees can find themselves in abusive homes, regardless of the vetting, training, and preparation for the joining of a child to a prospective family.  Many potential adoptive parents want the experience of a newborn or toddler while older children are left to foster care.  There's certainly no judgement on my part for decisions made. 

Some biological mothers found themselves unable to care for a child.  Some made bad choices with substance abuse.  Some couldn't even care for themselves.  I've known some adoptees who were the product of rape.  There are seemingly unending reasons children are put up for adoption.  I have to say that as I reflect I was pretty blessed, all things considered.  

The reality is that life is complicated.  In fact, sometimes it can quickly or eventually become a tangled up mess.  To straighten it out can be a herculean task.  For some onlookers the issues others face my appear easy.  In one of my favorite movies, Christmas Vacation as they tackle the annual Christmas light project with exterior lights, Clark gives his son Rusty a simple task.   It's simple, "Rusty, unravel these."  

Riiiight!

The look on Rusty's face says it all.  Some things are much easier said than done.  

Many times self-help books seem guilty of oversimplifying life.  You know...the 'steps' books.

-3 Steps to End Anxiety

-2 Steps to Becoming a Billionaire 

    (Spoiler alert) 1. Earn or inherit a billion dollars 2. Don't spend it all

-4 Steps to Perform a Successful Rocket Surgery

- 2,543 Ways to Simplify Your Life

-3 Steps to Finally Quit List making

Life isn't that easy, and solutions to life's problems really can't be boiled down to a list of 3-5 alliterated steps.  I just lost all the preachers!

I overheard a couple of young men in the breakroom this week at work involved in a thoughful conversation.  I fought hard not to insert myself.  I didn't hear the front end of the dialogue, but I walked in to hear, "Adversity makes people stronger."  There was agreement from the other dude and some other things were said.  It made me start pondering that word,  'adversity'.   Adversity to most of use seems pretty objective.  There are some things that to us are easy and some things are really, really difficult to us.  As I thought about it, adversity is in reality pretty subjective.  

What is easy for you may be extremely difficult for me.  And that sentiment goes both ways.  Everyone has different experiences and perspectives.  Going to the store, doing some grocery shopping, and coming home is as easy for ME as buttering bread.  However, for the agoraphobic person who fears leaving the house, attempting that massive task can potentially hospitalize that person.  Deciding to not drink is easy for some, but for others, it's one of the most traumatic and challenging tasks in their life.  Eating, honesty, relational faithfulness, pornography, smoking/dipping, drugs, and so many other behaviors are nothing and so easy to overcome for some, but massively traumatic and extremely difficult - seemingly impossible - for others.  

We need to have empathy for people who struggle with issues in their lives.  Too many with little to no empathy shake their heads and believe 'those people' to be weak and simple minded.  However, as I learned when I was a pastor, we're ALL messed up. We're all flawed.  We try. We fail.  We try and fail again.  Every single one of us has that (or those) huge issue that for others is nothing at all.  You probably don't want to hear someone say, "Here, just take this 'steps' book and get over it!".

Light the Griswold string of lights, tangled messes typically take massive amounts of time, honesty, hard work, persistence, discipline, reflection, and sometimes a lot of tears and angst.  Also much trail and error as well as failure coupled with mini-successes.  Most of the time it takes some perspective beyond ourselves.  We weren't meant to go through those challenges alone.  We need the help and objectivity of a wise friend, a trained counselor, and most of the time a large dose of Divine Intervention.  It also takes the will and determination to one day get past it.

Back to that breakroom conversation.  The guy was right.  Adversity CAN make you stronger.  John Maxwell was the first one I heard say, 'adversity will either make you bitter or better, it's your choice'.  Also, "it's not what happens TO you, it's what happens IN you that counts.".  

As I look at the (to me) monumental challenges in my life that I thought I'd never overcome, I hope to be a blessing and help to others who face perhaps not identical but similar struggles as I had.  I hope to be some help.  You probably won't see me writing a "6 Steps to..." book, but I'll try to help.  And together, on the back side of it all, we'll be BETTER.  FG

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