Gabriella is in her first year of middle school. She’s just got a toe in adolescence and already with the tears? And I think Really? Geometry is so traumatic for you? Seriously? That grumpy guy with the locker next to yours is ruining your day? Ruining?
And I also think You want real problems? Move to Nairobi or Kolkata or Kempala.
Then the neck of my guitar snapped. And the van didn’t pass inspection. And the hot water heater burst. And all of it this week.
Ouch.
And I think Really? A few repairs are so painful? Seriously? Spending money is irritating?
And I also think You want real problems? Haven’t you been to Guatemala City and San Salvador and Manilla?
At breakfast this morning Sambhaji said he didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to go to Holiday World instead. “One more day of school,” I said, “and then we go to Holiday World!”
“How many days we stay for Holiday World?” he asked.
“One day. All day saturday!”
He slumped over his cereal bowl, sighed long and low and stuck out his bottom lip. “I want two days,” he grumbled.
And I thought Really? One day at Holiday World is so bad? One day at an amusement park instead of two is ruining your morning?
And I also thought You want real problems? You should go to…wait a minute.
Real problems are the problems we have right now right where we are.
The hardest part of traveling overseas isn’t traveling overseas. It’s coming back home. So often, once we’re back in the first world, we feel guilty for having a bad day. After all, our refrigerators are full, our children are in school, our water is clean, our church worships freely.
Just as from an airplane every skyscraper below looks small, surely, from God’s vantage point, all human struggle looks the same in a sense. It’s all unmet expectations. It’s all opportunity to trust or grumble, to ask for help or go under alone, to pray or worry, to be served or struggle independently, to learn and know God more intimately or lose faith and hope.
Real problems are the problems we have right now right where we are.
Gabriella sponsors a child her age in El Salvador. She knows well the problems that child faces daily. She’s seen pictures and videos from the developing world and heard my stories a hundred times. But Geometry and that bully feel like real problems to her. And they are. She’s burdened by her own high standards. And words from a boy can hurt. Perfectionism and insecurity are real problems no matter what causes them.
I’ve been in homes all over the world that are smaller than my bathroom. I know what real poverty looks like. But when everything broke this week I felt like less of a man for not having the money to fix it all immediately. I felt unworthy of my family’s respect and love. Fear is a real problem no matter what causes it.
Take a kid out of poverty and fatherlessness and call him son. Fill up his cereal bowl every morning and he’ll still have problems. And they’ll seem like real problems to his five year-old newly-first-world brain. They are real. Discontent is a real problem no matter what causes it.
Comparing our problems to those in the third world seems like a good idea at the time doesn’t it? Seems like it will keep us grateful. Seems like it will keep us generous.
But this is keeping only God can do. Only knowing God can keep us. And in our real problems right now right where we are we can know God.
Amy says:
Yes. Only knowing God can keep us. Thank you for the reminder. And, my children won’t know who to thank, but they’ll thank you all the same when they don’t get the “you think that’s a problem, you should . . .” speech from me at dinner tonight. Maybe instead we’ll stop and pray . . .
Amy says:
Yes! Thank you. Thank you mostly for saying what I feel. People have minimized their problems, because someone else has it worse. I’ve done it too. A close friend of mine, after coming back from Nicaragua, said “I can’t believe I ever complained about a $2000 per month income, when they have a lot less”. I pointed out that he was not making $2000 a month in Nicaragua, he was making it here and it isn’t enough to support a family of 5.
It’s always good to be aware and to be thankful, but our real problems aren’t worth less than others!
Emily says:
Such beautiful words. So perfect. Captures the heart of coming home so well. THANK YOU!
Jason says:
This, to me, is the most powerful piece you’ve ever written.
Jessica says:
I think I’m only recently allowing myself the freedom the accept this truth.
You probably helped. You’re helpful that way.
Tara Livesay says:
Just as from an airplane every skyscraper below looks small, surely, from God’s vantage point, all human struggle looks the same in a sense. It’s all unmet expectations. It’s all opportunity to trust or grumble, to ask for help or go under alone, to pray or worry, to be served or struggle independently, to learn and know God more intimately or lose faith and hope.
Yes. That.
Jill Foley says:
Thank you – I had a hard day yesterday swallowing the fact that I need a tooth implant. I couldn’t stop thinking about how that money could be put to better use than to put a tooth in my mouth. But I need a tooth – especially my front tooth.
Thank you for grounding us – our kids won’t know to thank you, but I’m sure if they did they would send you a thank you card!
Sandi says:
Pinning this one to my “articles worth reading again”.
So much truth.
Stacy says:
This is such a powerful reminder to all parents. We want to try to help our children see the big picture, but one of the great things about being a child is not having to see the big picture just yet. We teach them gratitude not by guilting them for having more than others but by modeling gratitude. And we show them God’s sufficiency in all things by turning to Him with all our problems – not just the big ones that we think “deserve” His attention. Thank you for this!
Kelly says:
I think about this A LOT. And struggle. Everytime I complain – a kid or house in El Salvador or the amazon flashes before my eyes. And sometimes I think about the people I saw with Compassion and how they had SO MUCH more joy and hope and true happiness even in the midst of what I thought was horrible living conditions.
Sometimes I feel bad for us and the people around me because we have so much stuff that we are missing out on knowing that God is our EVERYTHING and clinging to Him daily to provide just for that day. I don’t see that same joy and hope and pure love for Christ on the faces around me sometimes and I think we might be the ones with the problems. 🙂
(And when Harper doesn’t want to eat most of the meals I cook – I want to say “there are kids in the amazon who eat RAT. And LIKE it. And huge grubs”. But she’s 3. One day she will understand).
valerie says:
Man, I really needed this. I have been the worst – especially since visiting Africa – at telling my children some version of “There are kids sleeping on the dirt and eating nothing at all today, and you’re griping about THIS??” Being grateful and keeping things in perspective doesn’t mean we have to pretend nothing’s ever wrong. Thanks for the wake-up call.
Laura says:
Absolutely.
Excellent post.
Amanda says:
This is so great. Excellent. Those last two tiny paragraphs.
Amanda says:
This is so great. Excellent. Those last two tiny paragraphs.
Cliff says:
Spot-on words of grace & wisdom. Thank you.
se7en says:
Bam… This post spoke straight to my heart!!! We took our kids to stay in a rural village in Lesotho last year and my first world kids got to live in the third for ten days. We had an amazing/different/life changing time… and so many folks ask us if our kids were cured of materialism there… why? Because they played soccer with a plastic bottle and slept on a concrete floor in the very cold – I don’t think so, we are just as greedy as ever!!! To me that is just a weird question… were our hearts changed definitely… does life go on, for sure!!! Did we make lifelong friends that my kids pray for daily yes… that has to be important!!!
CrystalC says:
Wonderful post! I went on a mission trip to the third world to visit orphans this summer and was just reliving it yesterday at lunch with a client who wanted to hear all about it. So I started a blog to try to have a bucket for the emotions and processing, but my real takeaway was that I will never, ever think what I had been thinking before- that I should tell my kids their football, etc wasn’t all that important in comparison to doing something “for all those kids in Africa.” I feel like I’ll spend a long time making up for inflicting that particular wound on my kids! If the country we went to hadn’t been closed to adoption and we could have brought the little boy I fell in love with home, the first thing I’d want to do is sign him up for soccer and cheer for every game! He had food, clothes to choose from and a roof. But nobody cared about him in particular. Still processing—- but thanks for this post!! I may just print it and tape it to my forehead 🙂
Kelli says:
So I totally needed to read this today for a lot of reasons. Thank you.
Payton says:
Beautifully stated. Captivatingly and amusingly true. Thank you for your consistent, vulnerable and real writings. God Bless!
Amy says:
Struggling with this one, to be honest. I think a lot of our problems are solved by a proper perspective. I mean, I get what you’re saying (I think), but I do still think it’s a tool that can be used to remind us what we have.
Dionna says:
I love this post so much. You said it so well. Yes, I’ve struggled at times with what I’ve seen and how I react to things in my own life. But we are placed where we are placed and we feel what we feel. We can’t feel guilty for all of it. We can only take a look at our priorities and our attitudes and be the best, do the best with where we currently are.
Yvonne says:
This is one of those ‘sit back and read it through when you think you are having a bad day’ kind of posts. It really is all relative. Our problems really are problems for us. But remembering to stop and give our troubles over to the Lord is something I know I need to do a better job at.
Ann Voskamp says:
Those vultures circling over the dump in Guatemala City… That God will come by here. Blessed are those that mourn — for they will be comforted.
Yes — no matter where we are… “real problems are the problems we have right now…” Right where we are.
Timbuktu or here.
And no matter where we are… real gratitude is the possibility we have right now.
Dare to Live Fully… Right where you are.
Haiti or here.
“Discontent is a real problem no matter what causes it” — and discontent isn’t a function of geography of circumstance. It’s a function of the heart.
Joy is a matter of gratitude and gratitude, a matter of perspective — wherever you are.
Thank you for helping each of us to clarify our perspective…
Truly says:
Heart problems run in my family too.
Rena Gunther says:
Yes, YES, YESSS! I want to scream it but I’ll wake up my people. I went on a mission trip to Ecuador the first of August. Nearly two weeks. First mission trip.
God is amazing! You already know this.
Then I came home. And I knew it would be difficult. Re-entry. The first week home I kept thinking that I was settling back into my every day problems, my struggles back here at home. And I didn’t really feel guilty about it. I’m grateful for that.
But I did need to come to this realization: I knew He would move there. KNEW IT. Knew He set the whole trip up, got me there, got us there. KNEW He would move mightily. It was so easy to believe. There.
BUT. He’s the same God here as He is there.He’s the same. Different problems. Same God. I really need to blog this. It’s trying to scream out of me.
I’m so grateful that we don’t have to feel guilt over our own struggles. YES, we need realize there could always be worse circumstances. But it is so very true that our problems are worse FOR US because they’re what we know. We aren’t living in those other problems. How could we possibly know them? We don’t live in our neighbor’s exact set of circumstances. We live in ours.
And yes, discontentment. We struggle. BUT OH THANKS BE TO GOD that He always, always, has a way out, a way of escape to our temptations. And when we don’t find it–nay, don’t look for it–there’s grace. Always. THANK YOU, Lord!!!
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post!!
Trisha says:
Our pediatrician shared a bit of wisdom/insight when I was concerned about our children’s over-the-top response to what I thought was a trivial issue….. He pointed out that the first time they have to deal with a problem it will be Huge, because it is the first time they have experienced that “crisis”. Then as they gain more perspective, they can handle the responses better. But he cautioned me not to belittle their intensity, because it was so important to them. They just needed more time to practice appropriate responses.
Kris says:
I have used some of those same lines on my own kids,inserting our sponsored kids names in the blanks. Ouch. This post was both convicting and encouraging. Thanks Shaun. This one was for me today! Oooof!
Praying your weekend is ripe with the sweet fruit of grace and joy, mercy and provision. God always gives us His best.
Debbie says:
Dear Shaun,
Your words are very encouraging to us. Thank you for sharing your heart and being an “open book”. It is vey helpful. My prayers go heavenward for you as we struggle together to do His will.
Melinda Lancaster says:
You make a good point. Actually several. I’ll be pinning this blog post for others.
Our problems are real, no matter where we live or what we own. They matter to God!
If you’d like someone nearby to take a look at that broken guitar neck, let me know. My hubby would be happy to help. He’s worked on your instruments before.
Jen Summers says:
So true. And, all of these problems (fear, discontent, fear, insecurity) are real problems whether we come to them from the circumstances of the first world or the third because they are all SIN – not fully trusting God – and that is a problem we all have.
Tracy Smith says:
Thank you for sharing this perspective. You painted a perfect picture of REAL problems and our need for a REAL Savior. Thank you for your consistent authenticity and your encouragement. God has used your words here many times to convict me and speak encouragement to my heart. Thank you for being here!
Melissa Jones says:
Definitely something I struggle with, especially being the only one in my family having seen poverty first-hand. But the fact that there are “starving children in ______” doesn’t change the fact that we still have bills to pay. There’s a balance to be found between the two things, I think….it probably has to do with the concept of “enough.” God is “enough” for all of our problems, no matter what they are. God is “enough” to act in our poverty – no matter the form that it takes. Maybe the struggle comes from identifying the poverty in our own lives?
christine says:
Thanks Shaun, this is a real help to me today.
Melanie says:
An excellent post. I have seen the “first world problems” hashtag used to mock friends, and it’s never felt right. Thanks for articulating this so well.