Avoid Stepping in Puddles

As we weave our way down the highway of life it is inevitable that we will experience some difficulties, ranging from occasional bumps in the road to serious tragedy and anguish.  But it’s important to take a step back and view these from different perspectives. Where do the various struggles come from?  Finding their source can help us see things more clearly.

For me it is helpful to break the challenges in life into at least 3 categories. Borrowing a scriptural term, I will call them Trials, Troubles, and Afflictions.

First, I like to think of trials as rain – we have no control when or where it rains, sometimes it just rains and we get wet. In life there are things that will happen to us simply because it is the way the world is. There are natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or severe winter storms that cause damage around us and sometimes to us.

Early in our marriage we discovered that my wife needed brain surgery to fix what doctors called a chiari malformation – she was basically born with a kink in her brainstem and it was causing a hole in her spinal cord. Thankfully the surgery was successful, but it was a difficult few months. For us, this was getting caught in the rain – sometimes difficulty things happen in life that we have little or no control over.

Second, in this life we will experience “afflictions” or things that others  do TO us. I remember as a graduate student walking on the sidewalk in Auburn, Alabama in the pouring rain (those from the South KNOW what a real thunderstorm is like!). I had an umbrella and as I looked ahead I saw a car drive by and swerve toward a puddle and splash a student who was walking on the sidewalk. Poor guy was absolutely drenched from head to toe– what a meanie!  If trials are rain, then afflictions are represented by people who splash us on purpose. Sometimes in life we will bump up against people who do unkind things to us or those we love. If this is serious enough, it is common to see examples on the news.

Finally, there are sometimes messes we get into because of the poor choices we make – I call these troubles. I use the analogy of us walking down a wet rainy street and stepping in the puddles on purpose!  With our shoes wet and our socks soggy we trudge along and become miserable. Let’s face it, walking around in wet socks and shoes is the worst. But even the best of us occasionally do things we shouldn’t, even if it looks fun (puddles look fun to jump in as kids, right!?) or we don’t realize the yucky feeling afterwards.

What does all of this have to do with connections? No matter what we are experiencing in life, trials, troubles, or afflictions, they are often easier to cope with when we have someone to help us through it. Our family watched the funny movie, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and I love the lines at the end when the voiceover says something to the effect of “sometimes you just have a bad day, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But no matter how bad your day, it’s not as bad when you have family to help you through it.”

Takeaway lesson? Avoid stepping in puddles on purpose, take an umbrella when it might rain, and draw on your close connections when you get wet, and reach out to others when they get wet. They might just need your umbrella...and soggy socks are the worst.