How To Love Almost Any Life You Have Been Given

How to Love Almost Any Life You’ve Been Given
 
 
”I’m blessed…I’m blessed…thank you, God…thank you, God…thank you, God…”
 
I was delighted to catch myself yesterday afternoon as I was drifting into a nap, hearing this loop in my head. 
 
It delighted me because these are not affirmations I was choosing. 
 
It was simply the record playing over and above conscious thinking. I realized it, and thought… “wow.”
 
This morning I woke up thinking it again. Again, I’m amazed because I’m in the middle of what I’d usually consider to be a hardship. 
 
My ankle is broken and it kind of hurts.
 
My back hurts a little because of new ways of getting around.
 
I can’t drive.
 
I can’t continue the new sport I liked. 
 
There are lots of things I can’t do.
 
But my life is actually amazing. 
 
I have people who love me enough to take care of me.
 
I have the freedom to spend my time doing whatever I want (as long as it doesn’t involve walking without crutches). 
 
I have amazing clients and writing students who have become friends.
 
I have meaningful work I can do from my bed as a Christian writer and coach. 
 
I get to help our local Pregnancy Resource Center develop and execute a dad mentoring program. 
 
I have a great extended family. 
 
I have parents who love me and have always supported every weird thing I’ve ever tried who are still healthy in their 70s. 
 
I have a pretty wife of nearly 30 years who is the most righteous and no B.S. person I know.  
 
I have a great mother-in-law who cooks for us twice a week. 
 
I have a wonderful church full of wise, independent, and humble people who love Jesus.
 
I get to work with family members like my dad, who edits for us, my son, who writes and illustrates, and my daughter, who does everything from writing and editing, to graphics, formatting, and publishing. 
 
I could go on…
 
God has given me a life of tremendous freedom. He has surrounded me with kind and great-hearted truth-tellers, and I get to spend half my work day just thinking. 
 
Just reading and processing. Just considering big and small ideas and thinking of how to apply them to my life. 
 
And then I get to spend the other half of my work day producing and creating, and by God’s grace, I produce enough value to pay my bills and feed my family. 
 
And napping whenever I feel like it. 
 
“Thank you God…thank you God…I’m blessed…I love my life.” 
 
Why all this bragging? 
I don’t know, except that I need to tell someone, because I didn’t always feel this way. 
 
The loop in my head wasn’t always positive. It used to be negative, accusing, shaming, prodding to do better, but with no suggestions as to how. 
 
I think that this change came about because of a decision to start focusing on my values and relentlessly living according to those values.
 
I think I’m reaping a harvest, and God is good (He was also good when I was struggling…) 
 
Sisyphus
 
Ever heard of him? Zeus didn’t like him, so he punished him by making him push a giant boulder up a hill each day, only for it to roll back down again for him to start over the next day.
 
Endlessly rolling.
 
Never getting anywhere.
 
I bring this up, because not that long ago, that is what life felt like to me.   
 
I have always been fairly goal-driven. But we all know that achieving a goal just leads to aiming at a new goal. 
 
Or worse, you don’t achieve the goal; you’re thwarted. Frustrated. 
 
Either way, life and pursuing goals can feel like Sisyphus straining and grunting against that ginormous boulder.
 
No! 
 
This cannot be how it is…but it is often how it feels. 
 
Why is this not the way?
 
Because we get the meaning of life from the Creator who made us, called us, and sent us. 
 
God made each and every one of us in his image (Gen 1:26).
 
And he gave each and everyone of us a mandate to be fruitful and subdue earth. He delegated authority to us to do something, to create something. 
 
We don’t push boulders up hills for no reason. We work to make the world a better place by taking on tasks we think are worth taking on. 
 
Whether it is trying to save or change the world through some grand undertaking, or simply cooking fries in a restaurant for the money you need to keep going to school.
 
Life is important, therefore everything we do is important. It’s your life! 
 
On top of that, even when we have goals, the only thing we know for sure is that we have this day and what we are doing in this very moment.
 
Even if God has given you a mission, a mandate to fulfill with your life, you still only have today as far as you know. Not even today. This millisecond, really. Right now. 
 
And this is life to be lived with God and creation. 
 
I don’t know your circumstances, but I know mine, and life is good. God help me if I miss it, because I’m agonizing too much over what hasn’t happened yet, or what I have yet to accomplish. 
 
My old loops at nap time would have sounded like: “Do they like me? Am I good? Will I ever succeed? What’s wrong with me? When will I be happy?”  
 
That’s in the past.
 
If I were going to be so bold as to put out a call to action, it would be (assuming you already know God): 
 

1. Decide your life is worth it (including your eternal life). 

 

2. Determine what you value about life. What is life-affirming to you? Focus on them each day. 

 

3. Have goals to that end. They give you a direction. But pick goals that offer a rewarding process. Because the process is daily.

 

4. Realize each morning it could be your last day and hug your family. 

 

5. Cultivate thankfulness.

 
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. —- James 4:13-17 NKJV
 
Tomorrow, I’ll reimagine one of the worst and most miserable eras of my life and try to picture what it could have been like if I’d known what I know now.  
 
 
God bless you today, right now…and now!…aaaaaaand…now!