Meet Trouble as a Friend

Where has Lisa been?

Peeling Foreclosure notices off her front door.

Educating herself on how to file the correct million forms to stay in her house long enough to sell it so that she might be able to buy another one some day.

Delivering flowers in a big white truck she needs a stepladder to climb into and beating off dogs with bad manners to earn a few extra bucks to pay her corrupt divorce lawyer, who likes to stand in the hallway of the courthouse and tell jokes to the other lawyer while the three hours allocated to settling her case with the judge ticks away. 

Wondering when she might wake up from the bad dream that is suddenly her life.

But also . . . . .

Reading inspiring notes from caring friends and relatives.

Developing a stronger bond with her youngest daughter that comes from depending on each other and facing hardship together.

Learning a hundred new skills she let someone else do for her and thought she would never need.

Developing empathy for people who live their entire lives with the demons that she is only getting a glimpse of: depression, poverty and despair.

Learning, like Oliver Wendell Holmes talks about below, to Meet Trouble as a Friend.

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around.  Wouldn’t be doing anybody a favor.  Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don’t say embrace trouble.  That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

“No, trouble isn’t the scourge of the world.  The world has its ups and downs.  So have people, and all the speechifying that breath can produce won’t change things or make the millennium come an hour sooner.  You can’t run away from trouble.”
 “Accept it.  Don’t worry about it.  Have faith – and do the needful.”