Our septic tank seems to be backing up into our house currently. Only when a lot of water gets used at one time, such as when people take a bath, run the dishwasher, or do their laundry, but it is backing up into the downstairs bathroom and running into the room where I sleep and keep most of my important (and expensive) possessions when it does it. Possessions that people in my life would be very angry about if they got messed up. 

This is a situation in which it is easy to be frustrated. It’s been backing up since our party on the 24th of May (see insert post about party here), and the septic maintenance people won’t be able to service it until June 3rd. That means we’ll have gone a week and some days working out how we are going to get clean clothes, bathed, and do dishes without causing more damage to the house by using too much water at once. 

I will not lie, it’s been a challenge and tensions in the house are running high, particularly when this is paired with the fact that my father accidentally broke the toilet downstairs, reducing us to a single toilet household, that my parents are planning on leaving the state the day after the septic is meant to get fixed and are therefore packing and running errands like crazy, and I am doing my best to keep the peace between everyone which is emotionally draining. 

However, conversations with my mother as of late have reminded me that I’ve been through worse. So, in light of the current challenge being faced, I thought I’d share with you all some hard-won lessons I’ve learned and been taught by others’ experiences over the years in my life. 

I considered doing this in a single post, but as I was writing the first lesson, it became clear to me that this would be much better done in the form of a series of posts. 

See, one thing my family (particularly my dad’s side of the family) has in common is our love of stories and sharing those stories (with varying degrees of exaggeration) to others in our family, many times, with slight details changing in each telling. Many of these stories I grew up hearing so many times that I could tell them as if I had been there myself, and every time I hear the stories, I laugh. 

As stated in “Finding Joy Amidst Life’s Challenges, ” my family and I deal with stress in our lives with humor. Many of these stories were formed from lessons learned the hard way, usually by accident, and always with the choice of facing it with good humor or negative attitudes. Sometimes negative attitudes were chosen in the moment but are laughed about later. Some lessons were faced right away with laughter and joy. All of the lessons had an impact on my life and how I face challenges in the here and now. 

Many of the stories I will tell feature my father and brother. There is a saying that “boys will be boys,” and while I don’t always like that saying as it has been an excuse for bad behavior many times over the years, in this case of my father and brother, it seems to hold. They are accident-prone and get into all kinds of situations that have created many lessons learned. Some of the stories will include life events that were outside of our control, such as weather, natural disasters, or other people outside of our household. Some of the lessons will include my brother and I in our youth in the villages away from civilization. 

I hope that all of the life lessons done in this series will bring humor to your lives as much as they have brought humor to mine.

-Dare.