Adaptation

It's amazing how quickly we get used to something.

It’s even more amazing how quickly children adapt.

 

My wife left early Saturday morning, before anyone else was awake. When my daughter woke up that morning, she had daddy instead. We kept to the usual routine, but she knew something was wrong. She wandered the house, looking for momma. It was cute, and slightly sad, because I knew how confused she must have been. You can't really explain things to a one-year old.

The rest of Saturday went…OK. By Sunday, she was used to just having Daddy. There was a bit of drama in the nursery at church, but I expected that. Monday was a perfectly normal day.

I was burnt out, she was fine. She did a much better job than I did.

Why? I had expectations, I had wants.

My daughter didn't. She knew that everything would be alright, and she just had to get used to it. She didn't expect anything, she didn’t want any more than she needed.

                Sometimes you hear [people] say, “Ah, I’m going through burnout.” Burnout, what are you       talking about? You don’t get burned out by doing work. Plumbers don’t have burn out. Ditch            diggers don’t have burnout. People who work hard don’t have burn out. Burn out means you have unrealistic expectations that aren’t being met. You think you deserve more than you get. That’s because you think you deserve something and you deserve nothing

                ….Well if we got treated the way we should be treated we'd be sent to hell, wouldn't we? It's essential to contentment to have a sweet reasonableness that doesn't demand anything, doesn't expect anything, and, therefore, anything that comes is received with surprise.

                                -John MacArthur