I was driving to work today, reflecting on reading I had done in my Bible before leaving for work, and Psalm 106:25 (“They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord. “) kept coming to my mind. It made me think of different people in my life that spend a lot of time complaining, making excuses and justifications for why they stay stuck in the situations they are complaining about, but do not take the advice they are given, do not try the suggestions people give them, and most importantly, do not go to the Bible they follow and find the answers in the best possible place to find them.
As Christians, at one point or another we all turn away from the answer God gives us, because it’s harder, or it’s going to cost us a luxury we don’t want to go without, but eventually, we all realize that doing it our way only cost us greater in the end, and we turn back to God for guidance…but them some of us don’t. I am nowhere near innocent when it comes to this, I won’t get anywhere if I don’t take the hard way, but one thing I can say honestly, is I don’t complain while I muddle through, and I have eaten crow more times than I count. It isn’t watching people I love struggle through hard times that frustrates me, it’s listening to days, months, years even, of the same problems being complained about, and not a single step has been taken in a different direction.
Problems don’t fix themselves. Weight doesn’t lose itself, homework doesn’t turn itself in, car payments won’t pay themselves, these problems are in our lives every day, they won’t go away without being replaced by new ones, but the solutions are as available as the problems. Sitting and complaining about the same thing, all the time, isn’t going to get things done any faster.
Remember in school when you would have to write an opinion paper, and part of the assignment was to include arguments you thought someone would have against your opinion, and then counteract those arguments with statistics, etc.? I feel like I am listening to people write opinion papers about their lives out loud. “Problem, problem, problem….solution, excuse for why solution won’t work….. problem, problem….why solution worked for everyone else but wouldn’t work for me……problem”. There are times we are in the depths of something destroying us and we truly do not know how we are going to overcome it, and there are times we know exactly what we need to do, but we won’t do it.
Go to God for advice. You can’t lie to him, you can’t justify, and manipulate, and re-word things. You can’t make excuses with Him, all you can do is admit you’re lost and ask to be found. The key to this, however, is you have to actually act on it. At some point, going to God over and over again for the same problem, doing nothing proactive to change things, isn’t crying out, it’s complaining.
This is coming off as harsh probably, but it’s the opposite. To sit back day after day and watch someone(s) you love self- destruct, to watch them live a lifestyle that is self-defeating and robbing them of living life, not just making it through, is hard. It is frustrating and scary and saddening but at some point, something in you shifts and you go from being compassionate and caring, to protective and angry. It is natural to lose patience with someone you love when you care more about their getting better than they do. It is frustrating when you listen to the same excuses time after time, wondering when it is going to occur to this person, “I’ve said this to her before”…. It is frustrating to exhaust every option you can think of: kindness, tough love, yelling, crying, laughing, walking with, walking away, walking toward…. And still watch this person tread water. I am not at all, in any sense of the word, saying it is easy. Life is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be that hard either. We have a tendency to make it harder on ourselves, and then complain about it, but at some point, we begin the walk back up hill. It’s not about comparing how I got back up the hill to how you’ll get back up; it’s a matter of taking that first step. Period.
This is not coming from a place of having had it easy my whole life and not understanding problems. I have dealt with my fair share, and for every problem I was handed I created two of my own, but I have overcome obstacles. I have gotten on my knees before God more times than I can count and asked for help. I have been humbled over and over again, and as soon as I get comfortable enough to put my feet up, something knocks me on my butt again. I don’t stay stuck. I may not be a lot of things but I am resilient. That is why this feels that much more frustrating- because I know exactly what you’re up against. I know exactly how lonely it feels stuck in the pit, and how overwhelming it feels to crawl out. It is irritating to no end, to have someone come to you because they know you’ll understand, but when you don’t enable them like another yes-man, all of a sudden you don’t know “what it’s like to go through this.” Correction, I don’t know what it’s like to go through this without going to God for guidance. Only difference.
I guess what I am getting at, is at some point we have to stop grumbling in tents, or coffee shops, treadmills, work spaces, and listen to the voice of the Lord in our lives. We have to stop listening to our friends tell us to leave our husbands because things aren’t what they used to be, and go before God to help piece back the puzzle. We have to stop disrespecting our bodies, then grumbling in the tents about bad we feel, listen to God’s voice telling you to honor your temple.
It’s easier said than done, I get that. I more than get that. I just think that ignoring the solutions so that we can continue grumbling about the problem’s end up being much harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment