On Dog Poop and Pacifiers

Letting go...change...growing up...these can all be very difficult, especially for someone who feels more secure when things are stable.  Sometimes, even when the better path is clear, it's hard to make the choice to let go of what you have right now, change the norms that you have gotten used to, and choose the path that leads to more growth, healthiness, and maturity.  Sometimes it might even be close to impossible for you to make that right choice yourself, or from your vantage point to see that it's even necessary or good.

Let me give you an example.

The year was 1985 and I was about 2 years old.  I was not, shall we say, the most independent child in the world.  I was colicy from the get go, clingy in general, and definitely change-averse.  Sounds like the perfect kid, right? :)  Predictably, I was quite attached to my pacifier.  I had reached the age where it was no longer appropriate or necessary to have a pacifier, but I still clung onto it for dear life.  Now I don't know all the details of the story, but I imagine that my parents were hesitant about the repercussions of taking my pacifier away but were biding their time and trying to find a way to do it as peacefully as possible.  That situation conveniently presented itself.  One day while playing outside, my pacifier happened to fall into a pile of dog poop.  Even a 2 year old knows that a dog-poop-covered pacifier should not go in your mouth, so my mom jumped on this opportunity.  For the subsequent days, whenever I would ask for my pacifier, my mom would say, "Oh Sarah, remember?  It fell in dog poop!  It's yucky!!"  And I would sadly reply, "...yucky..." with my 2 year old resignation to the hard facts of life.  (We just won't mention the fact that I imagine I had a plethora of other pacifiers around...I'm sure my cognitive abilities understandably were not able to recognize that.)  And using this dog poop methodology, I was successfully ridden of my pacifier habit.

So, what was going on here, on a slightly deeper level?  Cultural norms, orthodontic health, psychological maturity, and I'm sure other factors too were all hanging in the balance here.  But how do you rationalize with a 2 year old to make her understand that she should make the choice to give up the comfort and pleasure of her pacifier so that she doesn't become a maladjusted 10 year old outcast with crooked teeth?  That's nearly impossible.  Instead I was given a reason (even if it wasn't the real root reason) that my 2 year old mind could grasp, and that helped me understand the transition.

I may be 28 years older now, but I think the principle still applies in adult life...in a couple different ways actually.

First, have you even been in a situation (job, relationship, group of friends, opportunity, etc) that you think is really really what you want?  And you don't want it taken away from you?  Even if it's not the best thing for you (which of course is hard to see/admit)?  But then it is taken away from you in a...crappy...way.  And that makes you look back on the whole situation with more clarity and you think to yourself, "Wow, that was covered in dog poop."  Then when a longing rises up in you for things to go back to how they used to be, you can think about the poopiness that you now see and realize that even if you still want your proverbial pacifier, there are reasons that even your immature mind can recognize as to why that is not a valid choice.

That kind of makes me wonder...Are the reasons that I can acknowledge now just 2 year old explanations that help me cope, or is there a deeper reason that is beyond me that I'll realize sometime in the future?  Hmmm....

Second, it's not always easy to make the right choices, but does it ever feel like a pile of dog poop falls in your lap and makes the choice for you?  Sometimes it seems that my desire for healthiness, morals, or doing what's "right" just simply aren't strong enough.  But then as I'm dealing with that, other things that I see as problems or hindrances in my life raise their (in my opinion) ugly heads and oddly enough end up making the right decision for me.  It's like I have a pile (or two) of dog poop in my life that annoys the heck out of me, but it serves a purpose because when my pacifier falls in it, that makes a decision for me that I couldn't make for myself.  I imagine this could be any one of a number of things for various people - lack of finances, past hurts, health issues, etc etc etc.  And if we're being honest, it makes me kind of mad.  Part of me thinks, "God, why give me this pile of dog poop?  I know it's stopping me from making bad decisions.  But am I really learning anything here?  If I make the right decision for an invalid reason isn't that still an issue?  And how will that make me grow?  And doesn't that just leave me dealing with dog poop and practically the inability to make the decision for the right reasons??"

Sigh.  Dog poop is not fun, no matter how you look at it.  It signals loss and change and growing up in aspects of your life that you didn't choose or want and with methods that were less than pleasant.  But I guess that's sometimes what we need.  Maybe God knows we need a reason to wrap our minds around it all, even if it's just a reason for right now.  Or maybe he knows that we would have never made the right choice on our own and that it was so important to the healthiness of the rest of our lives that some unpleasantness was necessary for awhile.  Now my job should probably be to not go looking for the other hidden pacifiers around the house and just let it be...