If Only If...

Strangest thing, I've been plagued this week by these words:

"Life would be easier"...

That phrase has been stuck on my phone and every time I open my text file, there it is.

Life would be easier if... what?

If we weren't daily harassed by one problem after another?

If people would only speak encouraging words and not say negative things?

If we won the lottery?

If we never had to worry, or strive or struggle ... for whatever it is we worry over, strive after, struggle for.

I know I'm tired, too. Tired of fighting. Tired of the turmoil a home can boil up. When all the different personalities clash in conflict like thunderous winds on a stormy night. The hateful words pour down, pounding hearts and souls. Blast of lighting in the curses shot back and forth.

Life would be easier if…

if only if…

There weren't so many disappointments. So many hurts caused by someone loved or not so loved. Hurts I've thrown right back, as well.

The times I question, “Why even try? Why waste my time?” When I feel like a failure. I can’t do it, I refuse to take another step. When I want to give up and run for the hills. Yet each morning, I find myself getting back up, trudging the same path from shower to closet as I get ready to try, try again. To head into a job I’m unsure I'm any good at. Or to sit at a blank screen knowing that the words I’ve spent hours on may never leave the digital file they were created in.

At the end of his life, Solomon wrote: "Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun." Ecclesiastes 2:11

Life would be easier... if only if...

Then I look around and see the friend struggling to hold on to their life in a epic battle with cancer. Or the couple who've both just been laid off from their jobs and now have no income to support themselves. I listen to the child read his essay about how his father rejected him as a son. And I'm supposed to critique him on his sentence structure when my heart has been nipped by his words and the quick way he swiped at his eyes as he read. I watch another child struggle to keep up because his mind doesn't work as fast as the others. In frustration, he acts out and nobody knows what to do.

Yeah, life would be easier... if... if what?

Everybody has something stuffed down deep in their pockets. Every once in awhile they might pull it out to show someone before they stuff it back in. What does one do? Sometimes... most times, I'm at a loss.

Hurt is no respecter of persons. It pretty much spreads itself around one way or another. So does disappointment, fear, condemnation, anger… all that nasty stuff that bears its sharp teeth and rips apart hearts and spirits.

You know what I think would make life easier?

If I could get myself to a place where I love, encourage, accept and comfort more than all the other crap I do. (sorry, I tried to think of a nicer word for what I'm thinking and found none.)

Life would be easier… if I could love like Jesus loved. Despite what was done to him, he loved. Oh how he loved.

I want to. I want to be so pouring over with compassion that I can say to someone who has none, “Here, you can have some of mine.”

Lately I've felt all dried up and empty.

I want to be an outward looker instead of an inward seeker.

God help me! Change me. From the inside out. I don’t want to look back like Solomon who had everything and then some … and think everything is all a waste. Please, please, please don’t let me come to such an end.

Please?

Amen.