70%

It is late at night, I cannot sleep. This past month has been a crazy time for me. Circumstances have not been conducive to sleep, to much of anything positive.

So I started thinking about circumstances. I’ve had a rough month. A rough year in many ways. And I just got further and further from going back to sleep the more I thought about those circumstances and the way handle them.

70% of our life is determined by circumstances beyond our control.

Did you know that? I didn’t either. When I couldn’t sleep tonight I pulled out the iPhone and started listening to the sermon series at my church which is all about breaking the chains that bind us to our circumstances. And this very informative yet very alarming fact was presented to me at 3:00 a.m.

70%. That’s a big number. A really big number. No wonder I feel like I am treading water and going down fast.

Could sleep be one of those circumstances beyond my control? Doubtful. Perhaps it is the circumstances in my life and the way I react to those circumstances that is keeping the Land of Nod out of reach.

I’m quick to anger, slow to forgive, eager to please, fast to self blame, super speedy to put pen to paper or mouse to keyboard and express my anger, and quite often too stubborn to admit defeat or failure. Is this my personality or my reaction to the circumstances which bring about these reactions?

I think it is a little bit of both.

70% is a lot of stuff to not control. If 70% of my life circumstances are beyond my control, finding the 30% I can control seems like the answer. But it’s not. I learned that tonight, or rather this morning.

I’ve been carrying some pretty heavy, rusty chains around. It’s starting to hurt. It’s starting to weigh me down. Those chains are tied to the 70% of “me” and hurt because I am letting that 70% override the 30% that I can control.

Kind of like focusing on the negative. Kind of like a wrecked car that gets taken to the insurance adjuster for an estimate. The adjuster looks at the car (ME) and says, “well 70% is beyond repair so let’s considered this baby totaled.”

Now I’m the wrecked car in the junkyard waiting for the wrecking ball or smashing machine.

But I don’t have to be. That 70% may be a set of circumstances that I cannot control but you know what? I can starting changing the patterns of behavior, the patterns of thinking related to those circumstances. How I react to my circumstances, that 70% considered wrecked beyond repair, is a choice. I can choose to accept that hey, I’ve got issues and I can deal with them or let them deal with me, let those circumstances become like chains and shackles that go with me everywhere I go.

But I don’t think that’s the answer.

I don’t have to be a wrecked car, a woman considered to be so damaged she’s beyond repair, beyond hope. Not only do I have 30% of me walking around that is like a shiny new car (well, sort of…I have some wrinkles and I can’t do handstands or cart wheels anymore), I have 70% of me that is salvageable. 70% of me that isn’t an easy fix, but isn’t a death sentence either.

Like the cars in a junkyard, I have parts that still function and work despite the circumstances. I have hub caps, tires, fenders, parts under the hood that still work despite being in a totaled car (remember, that car is me).

The sermon that I listened to at 3:00 am after Henry woke me up for chocolate milk had me take a look at Paul. Paul wrote books of the bible while imprisoned and chained. Not only was he shackled with chains, he was chained to a guard every minute of every day. He was never alone while imprisoned. And yet he wrote some of the most beautiful scripture and he found joy in his circumstances. He found God’s will for him within the circumstances of prison, chains and shackles.

Joy in my circumstances? God’s will in that car that is 70% wrecked? Really? I need to that?

Yes, I do.

I’m not ready for the wrecking ball or the smashing machine…

If you want to hear the sermon series that inspired this post, go here and click on the sermons and either view them as video or listen:

http://cwcmilton.org