The Sh*t Has Finally Paid Off

Before I get into this post, you need to know these things...

 - I personally don't believe cussing is bad. I do believe that cursing is bad. My opinion is that the word shit is just another word for crap which is another word for feces or manure. They are just words. 

Cursing, on the other hand, is taking God's name and using it in anger.  Yelling "Jesus Christ!" after being cut off or "God damn it!" is very different than voicing either "shit" or "crap" or just "damn" or "dang." 

What it comes down to for me is that it's the attitude and meaning behind what is being said that's the issue, not the words themselves.

So, in this post, I will use the word shit - and I will use it liberally. I could change it to crap or to manure, but I feel "shit" just fits these situations better. As for me using an asterisk in the title, who am I kidding? If you are over 6 years old, you know what I'm really saying, so I'm not covering anything up by doing it that way. I'm just doing it because, well, I don't know why. Maybe because no one would even open this post if that stopped them - before I could even explain.

- For years, decades, I've had issues, obstacles, and, well, shit, come at me. There are times it has been relentless. There are times it has been overwhelming. Some of it isn't that bad from another person's perspective, but the cumulative effect is that each time - tiny or humongous - cumulatively cut me to the core so much that it changed the trajectory of my life. 

My addiction sponsor even noticed it. He has been through a lot of shit himself due to his addiction, even serving seven year in federal prison. Somewhere along the way I heard someone say that the shit truck had dumped another load in his driveway, and my sponsor and I started using that phrase. I would call him and say, "I just got another load," and he knew instantly what I was talking about. 

One time I mentioned to him that I knew that others also had a lot happen to them. I asked if I was just feeling sorry for myself, overexaggerating my issues. He's been around a long time, already in his 70s when he started as my sponsor, and has seen a lot. He assured me that more comes my way than most. 

- A wise man from my addiction group, actually my "grandsponsor" (my sponsor's sponsor), one day shared something really interesting in our support group. A friend's grandfather was a "student of shit." He studied how the different types of shit/manure from different animals affected plants.

He wrote about it in our group's newsletter (for which I was the editor and publisher) and allowed me to put it on my blog. You can read it here: https://www.spotlightonstigma.com/2019/09/sht-happens.html

Background done... now as to why I'm writing this. 

In the past decade, God has redeemed a lot of things that I gave up due to the shit that came at me for doing them, or by building a wall up in my heart about them. 

I want to share with you that the shit really does pay off - at least with me. If I hadn't gone through all I've gone through, I wouldn't be where I am now. 

It's funny... my plan was to end this post was to share all of the great things that have happened the past decade. Plus, even though this theme is something I've been meaning to address for months, having originally heard my grandsponsor share it about seven years ago, as I've been writing, I realized something else.

I'm currently dealing with more shit than I have in a while - probably 4 or 5 truckloads - with one after another. So, before sharing all the good, I was going to write a disclaimer that even though my life is amazing in so many areas - there are still so many that I would love to be different.

But this just means that there's more growth coming and hopefully more fruit. If I could only remember this when I get that next truckload, the wait to see what it fertilizes would be so much easier - a true perspective changer.

So, as my grandsponsor concluded in his contribution:

"You see sh*t happens for a reason – to have a more productive and fruitful life.  May you find it in your journey."