Parsed

 Since, for many in this generation, thinking is a painful endeavor, and applying logic to anything more nuanced and parsed than snow is cold and the sun is hot risks convulsions and brain melt, we’ve categorized everything into good or bad based on a superficial glance if that. We conclude that one thing is better than the other without considering any other relevant data than what we see before us.

 Of course, being young is better than being old, say the young in unison, but the old know there’s a tradeoff as you progress through life, and you exchange your vigor and pip for wisdom and forethought. You may have a preference, but determining that one is better than the other takes much contemplation and not a little lateral thinking on your part.

I remember being young. It wasn’t as fun as advertised. I got picked on at school, I never had any money to buy what I wanted, I was ever dependent on my parents if I needed to go anywhere, and I was constantly being told what to do. None of it was to sit by the palm tree and enjoy a refreshing lemonade. It was usually something involving manual labor, whether to vacuum the shag carpet that would never get clean or helping grandma cut the heads off fish for fishhead stew. There’s a reason I’m not a fan of fish; I had my life’s fill by the time I was ten.

Since I was young, I got the privilege of jumping into the dumpsters when we went collecting aluminum cans in the neighborhood, and even though I’d told both my parents and grandparents that I was being picked on because I wore pin-striped slacks, my grandmother had hand sown to school the thought of paying twelve bucks for a pair of Bugle Boys was anathema to all four of them.

My grandmother’s take was that it was their loss for not appreciating quality; my mom’s take was that we needed the money for food; my dad said it would make me stronger, and my grandfather, always the softest heart in the bunch, said he’d see what he could do to buy me a pair of real, honest-to-goodness jeans.

A few days later, after turning in our cans, my grandpa took me to the Price Club up the street and bought me a pair of jeans and a Vuarnet shirt with the graphic of a pair of sunglasses and a beach on the back. I still remember the day. It ended up being something shy of twenty-five dollars, all told, but come the next morning, when I was getting ready for school, I felt like a million bucks.

The bullying started again when the kids realized I only had the one pair of jeans and the one cool shirt, but you took your lumps, and you kept going. That’s why words could never hurt me as an adult. I learned they didn’t hurt me as a child.

It’s easy to be flippant about classifying everything, putting them in their individual rubric. More often than not, we use worldly metrics to determine which rubric something goes into, whether being rich is better than being poor, being thin is better than being fat, being handsome is better than being ugly or being young is better than being old.

No one bothers to ask who determines the standard of beauty or who gets to define handsome, nor do they ever tell you what skinny means because at a certain level of skinny, your organs start to shut down, and you starve to death. That’s just hyperbole because you’re fat! No, a woman who had a following of a million plus people recently starved to death because she was on a raw vegan diet, and surprise, surprise, she wasn’t getting enough calories to keep her alive.

You are not handsome or ugly, pretty or unattractive, smart or dumb, skinny or fat; you are God’s creation, fearfully and wonderfully made, and that is no small thing. If only you could see yourself as God sees you and understand the love with which He directs your path, you would nevermore doubt, fear, or wonder what tomorrow will bring. You will know His presence in the moment and understand that He will make a way regardless of everyone around you telling you there is no way.

What’s the point? The point is don’t look upon every trial as a net negative or every blessing as a net positive. Take the time to analyze the situation as it presents itself and use wisdom to determine how you should feel about what’s happening and whether you should embrace it rather than reject it.

Even when something you’re going through cannot be seen in a positive light no matter how hard you try, it may just be the timing of the thing rather than the thing itself. You may not be able to see it today, but tomorrow is another day, and you will have an entirely new perspective on your situation.

Romans 8:28, “And we know that things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

We start getting a hitch in our giddy up when we fail to remember that it’s according to His purpose that all things work together for good to those who love God, and not according to our purpose. What you see for your future and what God sees for your future are often very different things, but if you belong to Him, you must submit to His guiding hand, His will, and His purpose for your life, and not your own.

His purpose and your purpose are usually at odds. His purpose will always be greater and more meaningful than yours, but the flesh is myopic by its nature, and it consistently fails to see the beauty of God’s plan.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.