Straight Paths
"If you’re looking for an easy life,
you aren’t going to find it."
The Ashland Beacon
Loren Hardin
Willard enrolled in our hospice program at age seventy-six with end-stage complications from a catastrophic stroke. Willard is now unresponsive and requires the total care of his wife, Helen.
Willard is a fanatical Christian and a perennial prankster, which makes him "a man after my own heart." And Willard is not "ashamed of the gospel of Christ" (Romans 1:16). He plastered Christian bumper stickers all over his car; because, like the Apostle Paul, he believes that the gospel, " … is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes …"
Helen is a little subtler, but she is still witty with a wonderful sense of humor; but Helen can become very serious and direct in a heartbeat. One day we were talking about the challenges of life, the developmental tasks of each successive stage, and I suggested, "But sometimes I feel like I need a breakthrough." I explained there are things about myself that I wished I could change; things I would like to be freed from. Instead of being impressed with my desire to be a better person Helen replied, "Loren, let me tell you something. If you’re looking for an easy life you aren’t going to find one. There isn’t one!"
Bull's-eye! Helen saw beneath my surface, that what I was really wanting was to escape from responsibilities and the challenges of life. I was looking for an easy life, an "easy button." Chuck Swindoll, the popular Christian pastor, and author, said it this way, "I want about three dollars’ worth of God … not enough to make me uncomfortable … not enough to explode my soul … I think I’ll take about three dollars’ worth please."
I’m reminded of a time when I was in graduate school. Between full time employment, driving to Morehead University three evenings a week, studying and completing an internship, I was putting in about one-hundred-hour weeks. I sat overwhelmed at my desk in my basement. As I surveyed my assignments I prayed, "God help me. This is just too much to do … It’s too hard." I wallowed in self-pity waiting for God’s rescue, for an escape, an exemption. I didn’t particularly appreciate or expect His reply, "The longer you sit there feeling sorry for yourself the farther behind you will get. The only way to get it done is to do it. There are no short cuts. " God gave me help and strength, and maybe even a kick in the seat of the pants, but not an exemption. So, I buckled down and got to work.
M. Scott Peck, M.D., in his book, "The Road Less Traveled" wrote, "Life is difficult … once we truly understand and accept this truth, we transcend it … it no longer matters … Most … moan more or less incessantly, noisily, subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy … Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? The only way to solve our problems is by solving them." Scott Peck suggested that when we try to escape reality and responsibilities, that we escape freedom.
So, the bad news is, "life is difficult." But the good news is, we need not do it on our own. Jesus told his disciples, "If you love Me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever …" (John 14:15-16). I seldom sat down at my desk during graduate school without praying, "Holy Spirit please be my tutor. Give me eyes to see and help me understand. He didn’t do the work for me, but He changed my attitude and quickened my mind.
"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself." ("Self-Pity"; poem by D.H. Lawrence, referred to in the movie, “G.I. Jane)
Loren Hardin was a social worker with SOMC-Hospice for 29 years. He can be contacted at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can order Loren's book, "Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course" at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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