How to be Frustrated…and Live

Chez Nous

Now, I’ve been frustrated before. I’ve been outside the United States ten years, I’ve been in Africa seven, I know about frustration! But moving to a new country, that frustration was taken to a new level!

I wake up in the morning and it’s very hot, in fact, so hot I’m sweating like I ran a 8K (I’ve ran 8Ks, I know what I’m talking about). I get up to take a shower and discover there’s no water. Moving on for breakfast, I discover that naturally there’s no bread or cereal and my brothers ate all the leftover pizza. Deciding I can wait till lunch, I move on to school. Joy of joys there’s no power so naturally there’s no power for the wireless router and I can’t run the fan either. When the power finally does come back on, the router is dead and someone has to reconfigure the system. By then, I’m slightly upset, hot, dirty and wondering why I live in that country.

A modern individual without a God-shaped paradigm thinks he is the result of his environment and his situation in life defines him. That’s why Karl Marx developed communism and governments institute excessive social programs to improve what we think defines us. But I’ve learned two things here.

1) “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete…” James 1:2-5

2) “He gives and takes away but my heart will choose to say, blessed be Your name…”

Can we decide on internal joy? Can we decide that even when it does go well we can still be happy? That’s the only way you can survive…here….in the US….or anywhere.