A shit story

Shit happens.

This was a flippant bumper sticker in the '90's. It seemed okay if you're talking about spilling your coffee or not making the green light. But what about the really bad stuff? The really bad shit? Can you brush that off also by just saying, "Well, shit happens"? I mean, there's some really, really bad shit out there. People getting shot, children being abused, even raped. What about some of the things we've each been through. Pause a minute and remember.....Isn't it disrespectful to your own trauma to just say, "Well, shit happens"?

Explore this a little further. I think we have two ways to deal with shit when it happens. We can sit in it. Pretty soon it fosters anger, bitterness, resentment, hatred. Our very soul becomes infected. We develop a poisonous, toxic nature. The shit doesn't go away. It stays with us, we're covered in it. We grow so foul, it's as though we have a stench about us. We end up bitter, angry, and alone.

Another way to deal with shit when it happens is reframe. After all, what is shit? It's fertilizer, used to nourish and grow things, like flowers. It may take some time because the trauma and shock of that initial deluge of feelings and chaos--and shit--is hard to absorb. But once we recognize it for what it is, shit, then we can begin our choice. And it's a choice we will have to make innumeralbe times. "I refuse to allow this to polute my life. I will make something good out of this." I know, I know, this seems almost as flippant as the initial mantra of "shit happens." But look at some examples.

MADD. Mothers Aganist Drunk Drving. In 1980, a 13 year old girl was walking home from church and was hit and killed by a drunk driver who, two days previously, had just been released from jail for his fourth DWI conviction. The girl's mom went from the devastation of losing her daughter due to a senseless, needless, reckless action by someone to founding a nationwide movement to end the insanity caused by drunk drivers. Shit to fertilzer to flowers.

America's Most Wanted. In 1981, six year old Adam Walsh was taken from a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida. Two weeks later, the boy's head was found in a drainage canal. His parents suffered greatly, almost to the point of divorce and alcoholism. But out of that tragedy, the boy's father, John Walsh, started a movement to find missing children. This led to the TV series "America's Most Wanted" and an expansion of their outreach to search also for criminals that law enforcement was having trouble finding. Again, shit to fertilizer to flowers.

That's what we have to do when shit happens. Reframe. It's fertilizer. Make it an oppportunity to bring something good, something positive out of something so tragic it's almost incomprehensible. It won't happen right away, it's a process. But it can be done. We all have shit stories. We have to crawl out of that shit and choose to use it as opportunity to bring flowers into this already shit covered world.