Not Me: Learning from Life's Challenges

Have you ever thought, "It couldn't happen to me"? Comment below and let me know!

Sometimes it is great to think this way instead of walking around paranoid about everything. But it's also a dangerous because it can limit your ability to feel empathy and it sets you up to be blindsided occasionally.

I remember when we got head lice and it ended up being the type that's resistant to the pesticide in over the counter treatments. When dealing with lice you want guaranteed results and this was one of those sad times when even doing everything right didn't stop everything from going wrong!

This is the exact size of a nit. That's a baby louse still in its egg, glued to my daughter's hair.

This super lice kept going around at church and at school for months, but after advice from a professional nit picker we learned how to stay safe. I fell into the trap of thinking we were immune. Until that fateful Christmas Eve when I hugged my daughter after dinner and saw a live bug in her fine blonde hair!

We cancelled our Christmas vacation and spent the evening singing carols while shaving the baby's head and nit combing through 3 girl's hair! And then our own. My husband went to the local drugstore and bought 5 bottles of Cetaphil facewash so we could shrink wrap and suffocate anything we missed.

While I was overly disappointed about our cancelled plans and having to scramble to make the holidays fun while being quarantined, I learned something: I am not invincible, so sometimes a challenge really is too big for me to handle alone. But I can still do hard things. 

Hindsight has a way of sweetening life's sour moments so we can learn important lessons. Whether it's battling an eating disorder or super lice, I have learned to beware of thinking "It could never happen to me."

Read more at Kitchen Stewardship... And please tell me what you do to cultivate empathy.