Why me?
Why now? Really?
I’ve asked those questions. So have you. And in a similar vein to what I said in a previous post (“Choose your life by choosing your Story”), we tend not to ask those questions when we are surprised by good things.
No, those questions get asked in times of frustration, disappointment, inconvenience, and even grief. We don’t question the good things that happen to us; we consider ourselves either lucky or deserving. But when bad things happen — something is wrong, somebody messed up, or the universe is out to get us.
I could make a list of unhelpful questions. I have been part of a training process in which our assignment was to compose as many unhelpful questions as we possibly could within two minutes. It’s amazing how truly skilled most of us are at being really, really unhelpful!
It’s amazing how truly skilled most of us are at being really, really unhelpful! Click To Tweet
What I would rather do is offer an alternative question: “How might our lives be different if we chose different questions?” Would better questions change our circumstances and make those bad things stop happening to us? Not likely. So, why bother changing our questions if it won’t change our circumstances?
Because life is a little about what happens TO you and a lot about how you RESPOND to what happens to you. Asking better questions may not change your circumstances, but it can change your future.
Asking better questions may not change your circumstances, but it can change your future. Click To Tweet
Here’s what I mean: Instead of asking, “Why did this happen to me,” how about asking, “What does this make possible for me?”
Here’s an example from the Bible, written by the Apostle Paul:
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
Paul never identified exactly what his “thorn in the flesh” was, but it was serious — so serious that he begged God three times to remove it from him. When it remained, he could have spent the rest of his life in a funk asking, “Why me?” Instead — though we do not have a record of his speaking these words — he took the “What does this make possible” approach and evangelized region after region and wrote two-thirds of our New Testament. His circumstances remained, but his future changed.
Our lives matter as much to God as did the life of the Apostle Paul. What is made possible by our difficulties?
