Healthy “contradictions” for living a properly flexible life …

by 0 Comments

Steadfast, rock solid, undaunted, immovable – all soaring words that seem to describe sterling character.

There’s generally nothing wrong with any of those attributes — that is, in the right context.

The fact is, life can — and often does! — shake us.

Hard!

Every day isn’t always sunny and easy, wonderful and warming. Life also has trauma and loss, grief and pain, troubles and mourning. To navigate the ups and downs, twists and turns, and soaring highs and rock-bottom lows of life we need a strength that actually is flexible. Something like this story shared by A. Smith in “Bits & Pieces”:

    Years ago, Frank Lloyd Wright was given the impossible task of building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. No comparable construction job ever before had been undertaken. With patience he laid plans for the immense building in this land of earthquakes and terrible tremors. After carefully reviewing the situation, he found that eight feet below the surface of the ground lay a sixty-foot bed of soft mud. Why not float the great structure on this and in some way make it absorb the shock of the earthquake?

    After four years of work, amid ridicule and jeers of skeptical onlookers, this most difficult building in the world was completed, and soon arrived the day which tested it completely. The worst earthquake in fifty-two years caused houses and buildings all around to tumble and fall in ruins. But the Imperial Hotel stood, because it was able to adjust itself to the tremors of the earth.

How can we adjust ourselves to the “tremors” we feel when life shakes us? By adopting healthy “contradictions” so that our lives can properly “flex” to varying experiences. This isn’t what we’re usually taught; instead, we’re encouraged to pick one extreme and stick there. The problem is, to be able to thrive in all sorts of life experiences requires a healthy ability to “flex” by melding together what might seem to be contradictions. For example.

Patience AND action. We will be anxious, miserable people if we don’t learn to be patient, yet “patience” doesn’t mean inaction. While waiting on the Lord, or on others, or on a situation, we must act with understanding and wisdom while we are patient.

Meekness AND boldness. Jesus perfectly modeled meekness for us, but He was also bold — so bold it led to people wanting Him dead! It isn’t that we should be either meek or bold, scripture exhorts us to be able to flex so that we can be meek AND bold (e.g., Mt. 5:5, Prov. 28:1).

Other types of healthy contradictions can include compassionate AND just, forgiveness AND accountability, reconciliation AND restitution, disciplined AND faithful, etc.

Many years ago, someone who knew me very well told me I should be more spontaneous. I was shocked by the comment because I thought I was already a reasonably spontaneous person. One thing I was sure of was that I was a diligent planner. I could plan anything down to the “nth degree.” So the comment motivated me to self-reflection which led me to determine I could benefit from learning to be more spontaneous than I was. A few years later, the same person would comment that perhaps I was too spontaneous! The point is, I learned to not be locked into having to make sure every detail of life was planned; developing the capacity to be more spontaneous has led to some of the greatest opportunities and experiences of my life thus far.

So am I a planner? Definitely!

Or am I spontaneous? I certainly am!

Huh?

It’s not an either/or but a both/and, and the strength of that ability to flex has produced a richer quality of life.

How about you, what kind of “healthy contradictions” do you have embedded in your life? What kind of healthy contradictions SHOULD you adopt for a fuller, greater quality of life?

Scotty