Hard Things
I’m sitting in a waiting room while one of my daughters has a procedure done. For the past twenty-three years, I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time waiting—waiting for diagnoses, procedures, and surgeries to end.
There are times when it feels like my family cannot catch a break. I’ve been wallowing a bit in the unfairness of it all. But then, I get tired of wallowing and try to learn something instead.
When Annie was given a type 1 diabetes diagnosis, I was angry. I cooked for my family every night! We weren’t overweight, we ate pretty healthy stuff, and we played outside all the time! As much as I didn’t want this for her, I felt like it should be happening to fat people—to a family who wasn’t doing all the right things like we were.
Sigh.
I can be such a brat.
But a little wisdom has come with experience.
We want to believe that if we do all the right things and make all the best decisions, life will be smooth sailing. When this is how we think, life can seem really unfair. We want peace. We want no problems. So we try to control ourselves, other people, circumstances, and outcomes. And we get really upset when bad things happen. We say things like “but I’ve always done what’s right! This shouldn’t happen!”
Can you relate to this?
The truth is that life has ups and downs. Hard things happen to everyone. No one, no matter how good they are or how many accomplishments they achieve, is immune from the human experience.
I’m not saying your choices don’t matter. Of course they do! If you never drink alcohol, you will never get a DUI. But never drinking doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be hit by a drunk driver. And even if you never smoke, although you can avoid the complications from smoking, you can still get lung cancer. You can cook healthy meals for your family and still have a daughter with type 1 diabetes.
The human experience is 50/50. Difficult circumstances cannot be completely escaped by good behavior and correct choices. So stop expecting that. Hard things happen to us all.
Truthfully, the greatest insights and lessons learned have come through very difficult times in my life. Smooth sailing times have been less instructive.
Try to accept that life is beautiful and awful, good and bad, easy and hard.
That’s life.
