This is a question that most people grapple with from time to time and it has largely been on my mind this past week.

You see one of the best people I know — my Uncle Carl — had a very bad accident this week. While working on the wood lot with his son, his hand got caught in a log splitter. In the end the damage was so severe that his left hand had to be amputated.

Although no longer a young man, my uncle is very active and enjoys working with his hands. He is right handed but clearly the use of two hands was an important part of his former life and just as clearly that will have to change.

I was devastated when I heard the news and am still shaken by it — even more so when I think about how much worse the accident could have been. My whole family is upset, especially Uncle Carl’s wife and children, most notably my cousin John who was with him at the time.

As I worked through my worry and grief I kept asking myself that question: Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People?

I know people often say this when tragedy occurs, but this is not simple lip service — it is fact. My uncle is a good man.

He is a very strong family man who is still married to his high school sweetheart. He loves his four children as well as his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was a devoted son when his parents were alive and is loved by his siblings, nieces and nephews. He and his wife opened their home to many children and young people over the years and continue to open their home and hearts whenever family, friends, or community require it.

He has worked hard all his life — using his hands to service the land and master machinery and using his broad shoulders and strong muscles to complete every task set before him.

He has played an important role in his community serving as a volunteer firefighter as well as a cornerstone of his church congregation.

Yes, he is a good man, but his life has not been easy though and I had to question why one more burden needed to be added to his heavy load.

Many Christians will say that God sends us trials to test us. And there might be some truth in that. Many of us are stronger than we think and it takes difficult challenges to make this clear. But I didn’t think this applied to my uncle — he has had many challenges over the course of his life and I think he has a good handle on his own strengths.

However loss also highlights what we have and perhaps have taken for granted. Yes, my uncle has had a difficult life but he has also had a tremendously rewarding one. I don’t think there really is much that my uncle wishes for or envies in others. Yes, his siblings may have more money and professional success, but I am confident that Carl would not trade his wife and family for that money any day of the week. And I secretly suspect that if he did in fact have more money that it would be spent in large part on his loved ones.

And he is greatly loved by a great many people. Not just by his immediate and extended family but by the many people whose lives he has touched. I know there are prayers on his behalf winging from coast to coast. I don’t think he’d trade that love and the respect that accompanies it for all the professional success his siblings have enjoyed.

We can grieve with him for the loss of his hand, but we can’t pity him when we look at the many gifts that God has given him.

What is more, when you step back and take a look at the man he is then you do not even notice the missing hand. He is so much more than the simple sum of his parts and in the end it is the size of his heart that one notices most.

It is important to note that it was his right hand that was preserved — the very hand he has extended so many times to others to offer love, friendship, and help.

Deanna Mascle is an inspirational freelance writer. You can find more inspiration at Inspiration by Dawggone and her inspirational ezines Words of Inspiration Online and Daily Quote Online.

All of us are resistant to change, whether it’s in using a different tool, a technique a choice in partners, or lifestyle.

The ones that resist the most have big labels like, orthodox, traditionalist, extremist. They are the defenders of the faith, of the known, and of the accepted.

Some of the rest of us are followers, disciples, and supporters; we are the middleman, the ones that support the orthodox, the traditionalist and the extremist because after all without us what would these people be defending. We are the ones the cast the deciding vote for this group and the next group which are the leaders, the explorers and the visionaries.

All of these people are grouped together on a small planet with intention, it didn’t happen by accident. What we are doing is creating chaos, and what chaos does, is drive us to create order or make sense of what it is we are doing.

In my day job, I am paired up with all of these kinds of people every day in their homes and I may spend as long as two hours in conversation with them.

I always expend a few moments with them in casual talk before I move onto the reason for me being there. It often comes out that I am a writer and teacher. The reaction is always the same; they perk up as if in they are in the presence of someone famous. They will ask me if I have published any books and when I answer yes they are even more excited. Then they ask the more enlightening question, what do I write about? There are usually only two reactions to my answer. A sudden shift to the work at hand and why I am there in the first place, or they bring out their crosses and shove them in my face as a potential victim of a vampire would hold up the cross to the beast.

There are very few that are interested enough to ask me what it is all about, which fits into my own personal policy very nicely of not giving unless asked. I write and I teach because I have a desire to learn about the subject. This is the very small group that I am interested in. It is those that want to learn and are ready to be open to new ideas that would benefit mostly from what I know. But the real benefited, is my self.

Even in this small group, if one looks closely there is still something that each individual hangs onto dearly, even if it is only his or her name.

The root cause for this resistance is fear; it is the ego that fears for its extinction. As a race of physical beings with awareness of self, we have become very comfortable in the illusion of time and space. Because in ignorance we fear that we have very little of either, we move to protect our beliefs and move in slow deliberate steps, that may take a lifetime or several to move us from one step to the next.

I have heard it many times before as I am sure you have. “What if I am wrong,” “what if I have lived my whole life believing something that is wrong?” “I can’t start over now,” it’s too late!

This is an extreme fear that freezes us in time and the fear is unfounded only in that it is born from ignorance or forgetfulness.

The one really big aspect of the notion of “unconditional love,” which is “unconditional freedom,” that I cherish the most is that I know we have this freedom to come back lifetime after lifetime to screw up our lives as many times as we desire until we have found the will to break open the paper chains that we have bound ourselves and move to the next step in our personal spiritual growth. Life does not end at the cross, the cross is a bridge to a new awareness and is only a symbol of limited thought, which all symbols are.

While I was in the kitchen just now making myself a cup of tea, I was reminded that this bid of enlightenment is meaningless, unless I give it some meaning. Spirituality or awareness is practical, you should be able to put a key into it and turn it on to work for you.

Using this knowledge I am reminded that each and every morning when I go into work and have to listen to the boss ramble on, I resist his thoughts and think that he is not living in the real world and assume that what I am experiencing in the field is the real world. I remind myself that his thoughts have merit and I rationalize that what I have been doing is working and I just don’t want to try these things. I know that my productively would increase, I just don’t want it to for various reasons. The biggest reason is fear of success; fear that with success, the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to will change. I will loose my identity and will not be able to relate to this new person that I will become. Ego always fears for its own existence and it does not want to be left behind.

Resistance is simply a slowing process, we all change whether we want to believe or like it. Resistance offers us time to adapt to new things and accept them and some of us move slower than others. Should one become aware of past and future lives, we are given reprieve from the urgency of change and resistance to it because we know that time does not exist and that we never loose our identity.

We will collectively experience everything that is, all probabilities will be explored, and the fear that we now harbour will pass as we become aware of our immortality.

The fact that all these different types of groups live together on the same planet brings chaos or movement to the planet which in turn brings change as we seek to bring order to our lives. Life is change, life cannot exist outside of change, and it is our differences that drive us forward to the next step in our evolution or awareness of that which we are. It is possible for us to be aware of change and move with it without experiencing this fear.

Resistance is something that works for us within the model that each of us has of our world and our relationship to it. Awareness breaks down resistance and moves us forward, and for each of us in our own good time.

Although I resist change myself in my physical life, spiritually I recognize that change is inevitable and I practice consideration for those that both live in the fear of change and for those that move on without me.

I understand that those that I bring into my life represent opportunities for change and I bring them to me deliberately for purpose of change. I also know that I will not always recognize them as such. I know that opportunity always knocks more than once and that I live in choice and freedom that is unconditionally mine by my very nature as a spiritual human being. This is one area that flows easily from me without all the resistance. Symbols of resistance are acknowledgements for me that I can relate to and move past from awareness of their existence, and they do not need to be changed or ignored, but simply noticed as I would notice a turn in my path or a pothole in the road.

Resistance may be a human condition, but it is also spiritual because that is what we are, and it has purpose.

Roy E. Klienwachter is a resident of British Columbia, Canada. A student of NLP, ordained minister, New Age Light Worker and Teacher. Roy has written and published five books on New Age wisdom. Roy’s books are thought provoking and designed to empower you to take responsibility for your life and what you create. His books and articles are written in the simplicity and eloquence of Zen wisdom.

You may not always agree with what he has to say. You will always come away with a new perspective and your thinking will never be the same.

Roy’s style is honest and comes straight from the heart without all the metaphorical mumble jumble and BS.

Visit Roy at: http://www.klienwachter.com