The Nightmares We Aren't Living

Have you looked at your life lately?

We are ridiculously blessed.

You are probably reading this in a comfortable home, on a nice computer, iPad, or phone. You might be sipping a beverage (coffee from my Keurig maker, in my case), with your family happily settled in doing something fun or napping...whatever they are doing, they are safe. Most of us have good health, full tummies, and the luxury of doing whatever we want to do today.

And yet, isn't it interesting how much we find to complain about?

Let's see, I'll be raw and honest with you and start off with a list of stuff I could complain about:

I miss living close to my family.

Why does it seem like we never have enough money?

My son has autism and I didn't pick that adventure.

We are in the middle of moving and it's very chaotic.

It's really hot and humid right now.

I don't like my hair.

I want to lose more weight.

I have a hangnail that is infected and it even hurts to type right now.

The list could go on, but it's just dumb, at this point.

The reality is, we find something to complain about daily! Of course some of us have legit woes; death of a loved one, loss of good health, serious financial difficulties, etc. But MOST of us are just being spoiled brats.

Here's an ironic conversation I overheard yesterday while at my son's school; two women with their kids swarming around them were talking about their husbands. The first one blah-blah-blahed endlessly about how mad she was at her husband's ex-wife and how "half of his paycheck goes to her for child support!" "How nice it would be to be able to do more fun things if they only had more of the money that he was shelling out every month to his ex for the kids!" Finally the conversation shifted to the other woman, who then proceeded to launch into a complaining campaign about how her ex husband was not paying his child support money to her. I wanted to butt in and ask the first woman if she preferred to have a slacker husband who wasn't doing his financial duty for his kids? They seemed to miss the irony of the two of them vehemently complaining about (and agreeing with each other) the opposite sides of the same issue.

I have a feeling they'll just keep complaining about this for years.

Anyway, have you read or seen anything about Jacee Dugard lately? She recently gave an interview with Diane Sawyer and I saw a clip of it online. That girl lost her innocence tragically at age 11, and spent 18 YEARS brutally restrained, repeatedly raped, and controlled while living in impoverished conditions. She bore 2 children for her abuser and in this clip was talking about giving birth to the first one at age 14; while in labor she was alone, scared out of her mind, and yet she did it.

That just struck me! I've given birth three times in a safe hospital setting, surrounded by medical professionals and loving, supportive family. I never want to complain about any of the pain I endured, again. Not after knowing what that 14 year old girl went through.

Many times the questions we ask ourselves is;

"Why is this happening to me?

Why aren't I having the wonderful pain-free, problem-free life I want?

How come everything hasn't turned out like I wanted it to?

Why isn't my husband perfect?

Why are my kids so wild?

Why don't I have more money?

Don't I deserve a good life?"

What we need to be asking ourselves is;

"How is it that my life is NOT as bad as others?

Why aren't I the one dealing with a missing or murdered child?

How come I wasn't born in a country where I was raped around age 5

and then sold by my own parents into sex slavery

in order to give my family a few extra bags of rice?

Why isn't my family in a nation of civil unrest that tears us apart and forces us all into torture and abuse, including rape and being infected by HIV?"

Because the blunt reality is that NONE of us deserve the blessings that we have and the wonderful life that we are given.

It's by the grace of God that we are born to decent families in a prosperous nation.

It's by the grace of God that we have our basic health.

It's by His mercy that we aren't forced into

abuse, slavery, and a life of horrendous crime just for survival.

We gripe about our house when millions of people wish they had a safe place to sleep.

We critically judge our appearance in the mirror and devise ways to lose weight when millions of children literally starve to death every day.

We fuss with our hair, our nails, our clothes, and yet millions of kids wonder if they will live with their diseases long enough to become a teenager.

We moan about the mess and noise our kids are making when thousands of parents endure the nightmare of having their kids kidnapped and knowing that finding their dead bodies might be preferable to never knowing what happened to them.

Maybe your life isn't perfect. Maybe it hasn't turned out like the fairy tale you imagined that it would. But instead of focusing on what you don't have, let's try thanking God for what we don't have...those daily horrors that some people live and breath every moment.

Let's thank Him for what we DO have and remember that

..."but for the grace of God, there go I."

God Lets Us Bump Our Head

Olivia slammed her fingers in a drawer today while 'helping' me put away Daddy's socks. She stood there with her fingers stuck, and those huge tears just flowed down her cheeks while she screamed. Of course I quickly removed her fingers and cuddled her, wiping away her tears and kissing the fingers to make them all better. My main thought was; "Well, hopefully she learned her lesson and it won't happen again!"

This is often my thought when my kids hurt themselves. Surprisingly, I've found myself to be the kind of Mom who lets things happen to them instead of trying to shelter them. We let Samuel bump his head on everything when he was learning to crawl. I mean, I keep an eye on the kids and we do our best to prevent major, emergency-room visit-type accidents from happening, but most of the time we let the bumps, bruises, and scrapes happen.

Do we like those things? Absolutely not! But we realize that while the kiddos would be safer in the crib, you can't leave them wrapped in blankets in the crib for their entire childhood. You gotta let them out sometime....and we realized that the more we let them get those bumps and bruises, the quicker they learn their lessons. Within a couple of days of bumping his head on the table, our little crawling Samuel learned to avoid all sharp edges of furniture and never bumped his head again.

And today Olivia, within 2 minutes of sobbing over the painful fingers, walked back to that mean old dresser drawer. I watched as she carefully opened the drawer and slammed it shut. And again, and again. Until she satisfied that inner need she must have had, to "defeat" that drawer. Basically she learned how to shut the drawer without slamming her fingers in it, and she was obviously thrilled to show it a thing or two. I was thrilled to see her determination and satisfaction!

It made me think, though, about our Heavenly Father. How many times does He allow us to fall and bump our heads, scrape our spirits, and even feel like we've drawn blood emotionally while we make mistakes? He is omnipotent and omniscient, and you'd think He loves us so much that He would kindly protect us from getting hurt. But oh no.....He loves us so much that He lets us mess up. Besides the fact that He made us with free will so, much like these rambunctious little kiddos who run around bumping their heads in our homes, we run around in our little lives and manage to collect our share of "oops" and "owies".

Wow, you may think sometimes....How can God let me make this mistake? Simple; He hopes we learn from our problems and next time, refrain from repeating the mistake again. He wants to see us quit bumping our heads but instead of holding us back, He lets us go....right into the edge of things. He is always there to comfort us; holding us close and soothing the owie away. But then He lets go, and hopefully this time, He watches us confront our past mistakes and like Olivia successfully shutting the drawer, the next time we move past our prior problem without messing up again.

He is so full of grace, that even if we keep stumbling over the same issue, He keeps loving us and encouraging us to keep going.

So maybe I'm being a better Mom than I realize sometimes, by letting my kids get bruised. I am watching them learn from them. And God is watching you and I get bruised....He loves us so much that He has faith in us, that we'll learn from our mistakes.