Wrecking Ball

Life isn't easy.

I would really like it to be. Things would be so much....easier. But sadly, that's just not how things work, and sometimes (or oftentimes) we are faced with difficult situations that we have to deal with. The circumstances that we face aren't always ideal, and when we encounter such situations, we have a choice about how we're going to handle them. Will you just accept things as they are and do your best to get by, all the while grumbling about how life is unfair? Or will you change the situation? Will we use your creative abilities to find a solution so that you can function outside of the circumstances?

My mother died of cancer when I was a young child. That was a situation that no one should have to deal with so early, and it has presented the most difficult set of circumstances with which I've ever had to contend.  When I was young, I suppose I had every excuse to use my situation as an excuse and a crutch. But I didn't do that, largely due to the supportive family I had around me and because of God's watching over me. I was certainly sad, and the grieving process took a long time, but I never despaired. I never blamed God for what had happened. I accepted that sometimes really bad things happen, and you can't let those things keep you from living life. I remember thinking even at an early age, "There are two possibilities: You can either be overcome by your circumstances, or you can overcome those circumstances." And I tried my best to do the latter.

For most of my life, I've had a pretty positive outlook on the world. I tried to find the good in what appeared to be bad situations. I believed that life can be better than it looks, and that I didn't need to be defined by things that happened to me.

But then my thinking changed. A few years ago, I went through a difficult period in which a couple relationships didn't pan out the way that I had hoped they would, and I began to feel that my life was outside of my control. I began to believe that good things just weren't supposed to happen to me, and that there was nothing I could do to change this. I slipped into a form of fatalism--this was the way life was, and I just had to live with it. I was a slave to circumstances, so I might as well get as comfortable as I can and not worry about changing things for the better.

But that's not the way humans are designed to function. We have a unique capacity for changing our circumstances. We don't have to just play the cards we're dealt; we can get new cards. And that's something that separates us from animals. At a zoo, regulations require that the fence for a lion enclosure be at least 12 feet high, because the lion is unable to jump over that tall of a fence. So the lion lives with these circumstances, believing that there is nothing he can do about it.

But do you know what a human being does when he's in a cage with a 12-foot fence? He builds a ladder so that he can climb over it.

When we're run up against a wall, we wheel in a wrecking ball to knock it down. We're not captive to our circumstances because we have the ability to change them. When we build cities where there's not much water, we build pipes to bring it in. When there's a river we can't swim across, we build bridges. When one city isn't working for us, we pack up and go somewhere else. When our jobs are bogus, we find new ones. Life doesn't have to remain how it is, because we have the God-given ability of creating and bringing change.

Far too often, I live like the lion in the zoo. I want to get to the world outside my cage, but I just stare up at that 12-foot fence and stay where I am. I focus more on what life is rather than on what it could be.

But we're not designed to be fatalists. We're made to be changers and creators. The world is made by people who see beyond their circumstances, who don't take "No" as an answer, and who know how to work the wrecking ball. And that's what I want to be like.

I mean, have you ever seen those wrecking balls?! How much fun would it be to swing one of those things around?

A lot of fun. That's how much.