Navigating the Struggle
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Navigating the Struggle
The other day, Jo and I were cruising down memory lane, the kind of conversation where one story unlocks another, and before you know it you're back in a world of roller rinks, church picnics, and questionable childhood decisions.
Jo lights up whenever she talks about her family's old stomping grounds in Chicago's Morgan Park neighborhood. I've heard the stories more times than I can count: the church they loved, roller-skating nights at the rink, playing in open fields before the Dan Ryan Expressway carved through the landscape, and, of course, the legendary attack of the giant peacock. (Ask her about that one sometime. It's a classic. I won't spoil it.)
Eventually her family moved from Morgan Park to Washington Park on Chicago's South Side, 61st Street and South Calumet Avenue, to be exact, just west of King Drive and south of the University of Chicago.
Washington Park back then had a reputation. Several gangs held territory: the Blackstone Rangers, the Gangster Disciples, the Black Disciples, and the Vice Lords. The Robert Taylor Homes loomed nearby, along with other CHA housing projects. It wasn't a soft place to grow up.
And yet Jo talks about it with this strange, stubborn mix of fondness and grit. She's got a whole catalog of "Living the Struggle" stories, not much money, plenty of fight, making do with whatever you had. Honestly, it sounds like a deleted verse from the Good Times theme song.
She also never lets me forget my own beginnings in the Sumner Field and Olson housing projects in near-north Minneapolis. Both of our childhood homes have long since been demolished and replaced with something better, but the memories are stubbornly intact.
One of my favorite Jo stories is how she and her friends turned a row of backyard clotheslines into a makeshift volleyball net and played for hours with one of those cheap, multi-colored Woolworth balls. Meanwhile, up in Minneapolis, I was busy engineering homemade G.I. Joe action figures out of thin metal bread ties. Resourcefulness, it turns out, was the real superpower of our generation.
Neither of us knew any better back then, and neither of us cared. We were genuinely, unreasonably happy with what we had. Honestly, if someone had handed us a "better" option at the time, we probably would've politely declined and gone back to our own brand of homemade entertainment.
A Different Kind of Field Trip
Years later, on a mission trip to Guatemala with the family, twelve-year-old Bobby Jr., "BJ", got his own crash course in contentment, and it wasn't the kind you learn from a textbook.
We were helping lay the foundation for a cinder-block home in a mountain village, a modest 30-by-45-foot rectangle that would one day be somebody's whole world. Villagers and I mixed cement in a dugout pit and hauled it with spade shovels, each load weighing somewhere between fifteen and twenty pounds.
BJ, a suburban kid through and through, my own doing, I'll admit, stood off to the side and watched for a while. He looked at the finished homes around us, then at the one we were building: small, humble, and noticeably light on amenities.
"Are you adding more rooms to these homes?" he asked.
"No," I said, toiling, sweating, and keeping my answers short.
"Where will the family sleep and eat?"
"Right here, son."
"Oh."
"Where will the kids plug in their PlayStation?"
"Nowhere, son. You need electricity for that."
Another "Oh." This one had a little more weight to it.
Then came the question that told me he was actually wrestling with something:
"How can the kids be happy here without all the stuff I have in my home?"
His eyes were misty. I don't think he expected the question to land the way it did, on him, more than on me.
"Look around," I said. "Does it look like the kids you see playing are unhappy?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Instead, this eighty-five-pound kid walked over, grabbed a spade shovel, scooped up a load of cement, and wobbled his way toward the foundation like he was carrying something far heavier than wet concrete (see picture below). A villager stepped up to take it off his hands. I waved him off.
"No," I said. "This is BJ's weight to carry."
And he carried it... all afternoon.
His revelation that day was simple, but it's the kind of simple that sticks: happiness doesn't require perfect circumstances. It comes from a mindset, from navigating the struggle, making the best of what's in front of you, and refusing to set up camp in pity, anger, or envy.
Scripture on Contentment
Philippians 4:10-13
10 How I praise the Lord that you are concerned about me again. I know you have always been concerned for me, but you didn't have the chance to help me. 11 Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. 12 I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. 13 For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.
Paul reminds us that contentment is learned, not automatic, and it's rooted in Christ's strength, not our situation. Our country can be materialistic and status-driven. God tells us not to anchor our happiness in what we own or experience.
Contentment comes from leaning into what truly matters - freedom from grasping, comparing, or worrying.
Matthew 6:25-27, 30
25 "That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn't life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.
Here's a contentment passage Bear Grylls, the survivalist, would probably appreciate, a pretty good field guide for navigating the struggle:
1 Timothy 6:6-8
6 Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. 7 After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can't take anything with us when we leave it. 8 So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.
Closing thought. Navigate "The Struggle" through contentment.
Hallelujah! Sing a New Song to GOD. Sing HIS praise in the assembly of godly people. Psalm 149:1.
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