30th April 2006

'Trauma, drama princess' by John Fischer

I have a daughter who fights with life. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. She was born eight weeks early and had to fight to get to where everyone else usually starts. Nothing's really changed since then. In school, she always insisted on going way beyond what was required, not because she had anything to prove, but because she couldn’t help it. She performs best in the most challenging of circumstances.

Her only flaw in this is that she always has to complain about the process all the time. Of course it doesn't hurt that she is also quite dramatic. There always seems to be some trauma that forces her to overcome a new difficulty, and while she is in the process of overcoming it, we have to continually hear how much better it would have been for her had the trauma not occurred. To which I always have to say, (or bite my tongue, waiting for the right opportunity to say) “but Anne, you wouldn't want it any other way.”

And she wouldn't. That's why I call her my “trauma, drama princess.” Any other way and she'd be bored to death. In school, the only classes she did not excel in were the easy ones that posed no challenge to her. This is also why she loves extreme sports: I am beginning to think she has to be in a near-death situation in order to induce normal blood flow to her brain.

Now why am I telling you this? Well, besides the joy of writing about my one-of-a-kind daughter, whom I delight in, there is a message here we all need to get. We cannot always control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to what does. My dear daughter has a tendency to burn a lot of energy turning the situation over and over in her mind. If such and such hadn't happened, then I wouldn't be here or there having to go through this or that. Life for her is pretty much variations on this theme - fill in the blanks. Sometimes I honestly think she is still trying to get those eight weeks back she lost in the womb. But there's no point in going over what we can't do anything about.

Focus on what we can control - our attitude as we live out our faith. As believers, we know that God has a purpose for our lives and for everything that happens to us. We're never going to change the past, but we can live in the knowledge that what was lost and found in the process of getting to where we are now has become a unique part of who we are and of what God has given us to do.