Learning the hard way

People often ask “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” Have you considered your answer to that one? When we look at the purpose of life as to learn, grow, and develop, trials make a little more sense. Because our Beings are like a muscle. Use it or lose it. To build muscle, we need to exercise them. The fibers are broken and come back stronger. We need resistance and opposition in order to grow.

Learning the hard way is actually the only way to learn sometimes. We try to learn from others mistakes and we try to teach our kids so that they can avoid the pain but that also keeps them from learning.

This doesn’t mean we need to go out and smoke for 50 years, get lung cancer, and die in order to learn that smoking is bad. We can gain wisdom from others’ experience, for sure! But God who is all knowing and knows us so intricately and perfectly has designed a perfect plan for you individually with all the curriculum you specifically need in order to learn and grow in your own way. So some people may need to go through that learning experience but not all people. We all have very individual journeys. It doesn’t look exactly the same for anyone.

I love to look around at people and be absolutely in awe of God’s amazing creative power in making each of us so different. Even the Mom of identical twins can tell the difference. We are all unique. And that’s just on the outside! The twin mom for sure will attest that they have their own personalities, preferences, temperaments, etc. And everyone experiences life in their own precise way. It is absolutely awesome. I stand all amazed.

So why would we think that our lives would all fit into a cookie cutter mold? Or kids will experience things using their agency that we don’t want them to have to go through but if we believe that it is all for their ultimate good, it’s easier to “let” them have their agency. To let go of trying to control and to trust God and his perfect intricate plan for them.

This is not easy. It is hard wired into us as parents to protect our young. But think about what you are trying to protect them from. Let your mind go to the worst case scenario that it is fearing exactly. And see that you’d be ok. And your kid will be ok. The worst that could happen is a negative emotion and you know how to deal with those. And you can teach your kid to process emotion also. Then on the other side of all that feeling your feelings, you will both come out stronger. The growth and development that comes from experiencing something is worth the rough times going through it.

This is what a coach can really help you with. I will help you process your own emotions that come up as you work to loosen your grip on trying to control your kids and to just love them through their own learning the hard way. If you help them stack the blocks every time they get frustrated, they never learn how to themselves. And the same is true for all the skills they’re developing as toddlers and on up to teenagers and beyond. So the sooner we can learn how to control the only thing we have control over, ourselves, the better.