Michael is a free-spirited carpenter, contractor and “jack of all trades”. With his truck, tools and skills Michael could find a job anywhere, and he did. He lived in Florida for several years, where he flipped houses long before HGTV made it popular. Michael also maintained the homes of a large clientele of “snowbirds”, when they flew back north during warmer weather. Michael had a lucrative business in Florida when a close friend persuaded him to move to Ohio. Shortly after pulling up stakes, Michael was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer and was enrolled in our outpatient hospice service. He was only in his mid-fifties at the time.
Michael loves camping and fishing. I once heard someone say that you’re not a true fisherman unless you can fish all day, never get a bite and still enjoy yourself. Well Michael is a true fisherman. He’s looking forward to unfolding his lawn chair beside a lake, plopping down a cooler on one side, a radio on the other and basking in the sun.
Michael is no stranger to difficulties. His father died when he was twelve and his mother when he was fourteen. After his mother’s death, he moved in with his older brother, who died in an automobile accident one month later. Michael was placed in an orphanage and from there in numerous foster homes. He reflected, “I think the authorities just gave up on finding me after I ran away from the last foster home. I was sixteen and I’ve been fending for myself ever since.” Michael’s was definitely a “hard knock life”.
During one of my weekly visits Michael and I landed on the topic of adjustment. I think you’ll agree that Michael is uniquely qualified to speak about the psychology of adjustment. Michael suggested, “We usually refuse to change until we are faced with a crisis. We don’t want to let go of the past unless we have something else to grab hold of, unless we believe the present or the future will be better. But you can’t live in the past. It’s like the past is on your left and the present is on your right. You have to grab hold of at least a part of something new or you’ll get spun off of life. If you don’t change you’ll become outdated. You have to change to survive.”
Michael continued, “I love all kinds of music but especially traditional Blue Grass and Country. Sometimes I take my guitar down to the ‘23 South Flea Market’ to jam with the boys who sit around down there. Do you know the song ‘Old Hippie’ by the Bellamy Brothers? It’s one of my favorites.” Michael gazed upward as if looking back and started singing: “He turned thirty-five last Sunday; in his hair he found some gray. But he still hasn’t changed his lifestyle; he likes it better the old way. So he grows a little garden in the backyard by the fence. He’s consuming what he’s growing nowadays in self-defense. He gets out there in the twilight zone sometimes when it just don’t make no sense. He gets off on country music because disco left him cold. He’s got young friends in to new wave but he’s just too freakin old…he’s an old hippie and he don’t know what to do; should he hang on to the old, should he grab onto the new…He ain’t trying to change nobody. He’s just trying real hard to adjust.”
We’re all “trying real hard to adjust” aren’t we? In times of uncertainty, when the life we’ve known is shattered, we become fearful and crave the familiar. We can’t wait for things to get back to “normal”; even though the normal that we want to get back to may have been the normal, just two months earlier, we wanted to escape from. Like the Hebrew people who Moses led out of slavery, we want to go back to Egypt, (Numbers 11:1-6).
I don’t mean to minimize the sometimes overwhelming anxiety, anguish and grief of losing what used to be, but, “Why do we assume that normal is back there…What if normal wasn’t normal; it was just what we knew…What if normal isn’t something to get back to but something to look forward to…What if God is trying to bring us into a new normal…but to get there, there’s something we have to give up,” (YouTube, Steve Furtick, “Looking Forward to Normal”).
My wife, Susie, and I recently experienced changes stacked upon changes and we’ve been “trying real hard to adjust.” Our daughter, Mandy, who is a Registered Nurse in Louisville, after prayerful consideration sent us the following message. It spoke to and helped me, perhaps it will you too, “Letting go can be very emotionally difficult…it’s so easy to attach our identity, our happiness and our emotions to things here on earth…I really believe that God allows our attachments on earth to be broken sometimes so that we can reattach ourselves to Him, ‘Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things,’ (Colossians 3:2-5).”
In conclusion I leave you with some words of wisdom from Oswald Chambers, “Never live on memories…God never has museums…Stop harking back to what you once were when God wants you to become something you’ve never been.” (My Utmost for His Highest)
“No one puts a piece of un-shrunk cloth on an old garment for the patch pulls away from the garment and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved (Jesus, Matthew 9: 16-17).
Loren Hardin is a social worker with SOMC-Hospice and can be reached at 740-357-6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can order Loren’s book, “Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course”, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
The Link LonkFebruary 06, 2022 at 02:10AM
https://www.peoplesdefender.com/2022/02/05/just-trying-real-hard-to-adjust-2/
Just trying real hard to adjust - The People's Defender
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