AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

I've heard it said that if you don't want to hit bottom, stop digging the hole!  For some of us, this lesson doesn't come easy.  It took me three and a half years to hit bottom.  When I finally stopped digging long enough to look up and ask God for help, my life changed dramatically.

This heavenly makeover began with the reshaping of my values.  No longer could I place independence, physical ability, and the making of money at the top of my list.   God taught me how to live life on a different level-a deeper one.  He pointed me toward people who had worse problems than mine, and showed me ways
that I could help them, which led me back to the halls of academia to study social work.   This challenge took my focus off of "poor me" in a big hurry!  It also reminded me that I don't have the corner on suffering.

Today, I correspond with dozens of people around the country offering encouragement to brighten a day, and humor to bring a smile.  I've also started including cartoons with bills I send out.  After all, a real person, who might be in need of some humor, sits on the receiving end.  Few people lament, at the end of their lives, that they spent too much time laughing.

Next, God went to work on my attitude, and I learned another secret--one that Viktor Frankl had discovered over five decades earlier at the hands of his captors in a Nazi concentration camp.  He stated, "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any givenset of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

  No matter what my circumstances, I will always have the ability to choose how to respond.   If an aide is late one morning and I have to stay in bed longer, I can choose to accept the delay and move on, or I can get ticked off and let it ruin my whole day.  This doesn't mean that I don't ever get angry over delays and day-to-day hassles, it simply means that my actions-and reactions-are up to me.  We all have this choice.  It just takes some of us a little longer to catch on!

Copyright©Baker

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