That "Life Stinks" Bucket is Getting Pretty Full

As a young man, I thought the bucket was full after my arthritis diagnosis (silly boy). Surely it was full after emergency stomach surgery and a hip replacement by 19, but no it was not. Well definitely after my sister passed from cancer and my dad had cancer (not to mention my wife’s very difficult pregnancies). It was still not full, even after 2 more hip replacements – how big was this bucket anyway?

This is how I felt. Time after time, more and more got poured into the “Life Stinks” Bucket. I really was beginning to wonder if it was more like a swimming pool than a bucket, because there was no way a bucket could hold this much.

In spite of all of this, I was still pretty up beat, and generally saw the good in life. Surely by now, I had weathered most of the challenges life could throw at me, and maybe things would settle down. Apparently, that was not the plan, and that “Life Stinks” bucket was about to get a little more full.

When the doctor told me I had Parkinson’s, I sat there in some disbelief thinking “This totally stinks”. How could this be? I had already had enough bad stuff happen in life to fill 4 or 5 life stinks buckets, how could I fit any more in this bucket? As we walked out, teary eyed, I remember saying to my wife, “That life stinks bucket is getting pretty full.” This is really how I felt and was probably one of the most truthful statements that I had ever uttered.

It was easy at that moment to focus on all the bad, all that was wrong, and see a very grim future with little hope. I could picture all the ways my body would fail me, and the struggles that I not only had but would have and the pain it would cause those I loved, and it was easy to look at this mountain of sorrow and simply exclaim, “This stinks.”

You see, at that moment, all I could focus on, all that I could see, was the sorrow and pain. From that vantage point, life really did stink. But you see, I was missing something important. I had another bucket. I was missing and forgetting all the good – all the blessings surrounding me. There were so many things to be thankful for, so much good, and so many blessings.

The bad things and even this new challenge, did not negate all the good, but at that moment it skewed my perspective and clouded my vision. It overshadowed all that was still good, and made me forget how truly blessed I was. As I thought and prayed about this, the Lord began to remind me of these things, and that “life stinks” bucket, didn’t seem quite so full after all.

This revelation did not mean the pain and sorrow was gone. It did not mean there was no fear for the future. It did not mean my body was magically healed. It simply meant that the bad, the sorrow, was not my sole focus. There were many good things – things to be thankful for – and this was just one more challenge to make life a little more interesting.

We all have a life stinks bucket, but we also have a bucket full of blessings. We can choose which bucket to carry with us daily. It does not mean we do not acknowledge the pain and struggle, it just simply means we choose not to be consumed by it. Jeremiah 17:7 reminds us, “…blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.” No matter how full that life stinks bucket gets, if I am trusting in Him, I will be blessed and see those blessings, and that bucket will always outweigh the sorrows of life.