Heads up

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. - Leo Buscaglia

I'm a pessimistic person by nature. Surprised? No? I didn't think you would be. It's just who I am. I will always prepare for the worst possible outcome of any situation, even if that situation is a day at the beach. I will prepare for a shark attack and a case of sun poisoning. I mean, I'm still fun. At least I think I am, I try to be. I love to laugh and I think I have a pretty darn good sense of humor. But, for better or for worse, I tend to notice a lot more of the bad and evil in this world than the good. While some people will always see the glass as half full I will always see it as half empty and another friggin dish to wash.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still joyful, still love hearing heartwarming, positive stories and I enjoy life. I know that life is filled with amazing things and amazing people and I am surrounded by a lot of them. It's just that there are times I get overwhlemed by this world and all of the bad in it. I struggle with not wanting to be ignorant about things happening but also trying to find a balance between being educated, doing my part and still finding the joy and goodness in this world and in myself. It's easy for me to end up depressed thinking about the kind of world my son will grow up in and to fall into what Shane Hipps calls, "Empathic Overload" and "Empathic Paralysis".

I saw Shane Hipps speak at a Catalyst conference a few years ago and he said something that has stuck with me (even though I can't remember the exact quote and will probably screw it up). Basically he said that we as humans were designed to be empathic but we were not designed to know about all of the suffering in the world all of the time. But as media and technology have progressed that is exactly what has happened and there are positives and negatives to this development. The positive is knowing what is happening and being able to make a difference globally and the negative is that we get overloaded and overwhelmed and eventually become desensitized to it and paralyzed thinking there's just too much to fix so we just don't do anything at all, globally or locally. After Googling Shane last night in an attempt to not completely screw up what he said (what would we do without Google?!) I found this great article speaking about Shane Hipps and what he says about this. You can read the article here RLC-Article-Shane-Hipps And you should read it. It explains all of this much better than I can.

So for me, I'm still working on finding that balance and avoiding "Missional Paralysis" (another thing Shane speaks to). I'm working on tipping the scales to the side of life giving thoughts rather than life draining ones and doing what I can instead of becoming paralyzed. But to some extent I am who I am so when I sit down to write, more often than not my focus goes to the negative thoughts vying for attention in my head. So, good or bad, that's probably the direction some of my posts will go in but I promise I'll try not to linger there :-) I guess I just felt like giving a heads up. Jeeze, I sound so depressing!! And this is me AFTER I've found hope in Jesus Christ and I know that this life is not all there is. Can you imagine what I was like before that...poor Jim.