Problem Solving and Time

My parents divorced as I entered my freshman year of high school. It was a pivotal moment in my story, and I've born my share of wounds as a result. Safe to say, that was when I was definitively thrown from the Garden of Eden. Everyone of us has had a moment or a season like that. The discovery that the world isn't right. It has produced a lot of work that I've had to do, especially as I desire to pass to my kids the best, and limit the amount of generational shit that can fall on them. I hope freedom for myself, and for them.

The last 3 or 4 years I've spent uncovering, confronting, naming, grieving and renaming much of what has happened. It's been a helpful step in my own journey and leads me to the truest things about myself. My dad and I have become closer over the years, and I think that's to speak highly of his process, and also that as adults the nature of our engagement changes from teacher/student to comrades-in-arms...well, he's given me a book recommendation that he read during that season of his life, and it's been great to read some of my dad in this book, and hear what it has for me today. From "The Road Less Traveled":



The inclination to ignore problems is..."a simple manifestation of an unwillingness to delay gratification. Confronting problems is, as I have said, painful. To willingly confront a problem early, before we are forced to confront it by circumstances, means to put aside something pleasant or less painful for something more painful. It is choosing to suffer now in the hope of future gratification rather than choosing to continue present gratification in the hope that future suffering will not be necessary."

How does this relate to me? Let me count the ways. Richard Rohr says (here we go again) all spirituality is about what we do with our pain. I pray for courage. Love through the fear. And a spirit that transcends the truth that life is difficult.