What are some beliefs that you held as a child that turned out not to be true?

Well, like other children who grow up with adversity, I've very early felt that I only have myself to rely on and that I can overcome a lot if I'm determined to do so.  These days, I have more of an appreciation that it is still true, but there mostly is a trade off in terms of loss of wellbeing, that my energy and strength is finite and it is sometimes the wiser move to turn my back and walk away from certain challenges.     

How do the misconceptions we hold as children often shape our lives???

I have clearly spend way too much energy and perseverance towards causes/projects that I should have abandoned early instead of seeing them through at any cost.  

How can the recognition that this life will have loss, pain, and trouble prepare us to face these challenging times??

I think that loss reminds us that everything will eventually pass.  The good, the bad, life itself, that of others and our own.  The only thing we have is to remain loyal to life itself here and now, no matter what (easily said of course...)      

What are some of the consequences if we deny or ignore the reality of pain in this life?????

I guess like everything that doesn't come to the open...  instead of healing, it lingers on and festers.

Last edited by gabriele (9/06/2017 3:11 am)

I also did not picture myself first as a wife and mother.  I am guessing that this is because I spent my formative years growing up in China and before that being born in Burma, now Myanmar, and India with a brief few months in the state, living in Florida:  Dunedin I think was the name of the town or city.  There were several single women both with the China Inland Mission and with Christian Missions and Many Lands, the mission board under which my parents were.  I saw that they lived full and productive lives just as the married women did.  In fact my mom frequently noted that on the mission field she was important.  On furlough back in the states, other people, not my dad, expected her to stay home with her children rather than joining him as he traveled.   Whatever I saw myself doing, I expected it to be both on the mission field oversees and/or working with ministries, like Jim Vaus (some of you may recognize the name) who had a ministry in NYC for teens in violent neighborhoods.  And I expected it to include lots of music. 

On the one hand, my life is very different from what I thought I would be doing and where I would be doing it.  On the other hand, I have never had the sense that God has been moving me from that childhood sense of what I would become.  "Whatsoever you hand finds to do, do it with all your might."  Somewhere along the line even during my college years, I began to realize that life is best lived day to day.  Manna was given daily in the book of Exodus and those who took more than then needed for the day found that it turned to worms.  When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He taught them to ask for what they needed for the day.  
I too met my husband in college.  And we married four years after we first met but three years after we began to date.  At no time in all my growing up years did I imagine what it would be like to be married to a man battling mental illness 13 years after we were married with two little ones.  But learning, when I was much younger, the value of "Give us this day our daily bread.", has been strengthening.  
 

Bumping this up just to see if I get any comments.