Dealing With Stress

After watching young people (anyone under 30 years old... snicker) demonstrating and rioting because they find their lot in life so difficult I want to throw up. It makes me that sick. They want other people to pay for their college education. They want to enter the work force and get paid large salaries for sitting on their duffs in front of a computer screen. They act like they are the only ones who have to deal with the stress of living. Yep. Living can be stressful, especially when you have to deal with reality.

I didn't have rich parents. I had to pay my way through college, even paying for classes I never finished because I dropped out and went into the Navy. I had to get a job and pay for my first car, and every car there after. In my senior high school year I bought my own clothes and shoes. And I mean I bought them with my own money that I earned working at various jobs after school. My parents were unable to pay for them because of medical and other expenses.

I swept floors and washed windows. I mowed yards and pulled weeds. I shoveled snow. I shoveled sand and gravel. I shoveled manure. I pounded nails and sawed boards working for a building contractor. The job site with the contractor was 50 miles outside of Fairbanks, located on a mountainside on a rough, steep gravel road. I got up at 5 a.m. so I could be on the job by 6:30 a.m. We worked a minimum of 10 hours a day, and sometimes 12-14 hours straight. I wasn't paid overtime.

Most of my life the jobs I've had required long hours 6 to 7 days a week. There were days I went to work Monday morning and went home Wednesday night. I've done every job there is to do in the newspaper and commercial printing industry. Operate a 6-unit full color press? Yep. Fix one when something broke. Yep. Gotten covered with printing ink, oil and grease? Yep. Injured on the job. Yep. Did I start at the bottom of the ladder? Yep. Paid minimum wage? Yep.

Put my life on the line risking death by fire? Yep. Face drowning in a flood? Yep. Work in -60 to -70 below zero weather in ice fog so dense you couldn't see more than 3 feet? Yep. Did I face death on the operating table at 5 years old? Yep.

All these things and more were an integral part of my life. I never complained and never demanded that I be given an easy road to travel.

After marrying the love of my life, she and I raised 5 kids of our own and adopted a 6th. I won't list the tribulations of those 50 years! Our kids finally turned out OK. My wife suffers from leukemia and diabetes. She broke her pelvis in five places. Recently she lost part of one of her legs. Currently she is in a rehab facility in Fort Collins, CO. While there she was taken to the emergency room at the local hospital last week. She's O.K. now. And this is just a short list of all that she's gone through.

We went bankrupt, lost our business and our home and spent the next 20 plus years repairing our credit score and working our tails off to make enough money to have a roof over our heads and food to eat.

Through all of this and lots more Dorothy and I never blamed anyone. It was just a part of life. It took some time (more than a few years) but we learned to trust in Jesus and our heavenly Father to get us through all of stress and disasters of life. They are not over yet, but we refuse to riot in the streets to get the government to pay the bills and give us an easy ride.

It sill isn't easy, but we'll make it through to the end and some day she and I will see the smiling face of Jesus as he welcomes us to our final eternal home. This is the way Dorothy and I deal with stress and strife. You might want to try it sometime.