4 Surefire Steps to Solve Life's Problems

Stories of Hope in Hard Times

Tamara K. Anderson tells a story in her life about a time when she felt completely overwhelmed, the answer she received, and the 4 steps to problem solve any situation with God's help.

My Story of Feeling Overwhelmed

In this episode I take you to a time in my life as a young mother when life was very overwhelming. I had 4 children ages: 7 years, 6 years, 2 1/2 years and 6 months. The challenge: only one of my children could communicate with me verbally. That is because my 6 year old Nathan and my 2 1/2 year old Jacob were on the autism spectrum. Nathan was challenging and wouldn't stay dressed, tantrumed because he couldn't communicate, and smeared his poop into the carpet every few days.

Jacob was so smart and capable at escaping our home and running straight toward danger because he had no fear. Once we found him climbing the ladder onto a neighbors roof, running into the street or once he almost jumped into a neighbor's pool.

My days were long and my nights were even longer since kiddos on the spectrum have a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep (plus I had a sleeping baby).

Exhausted as I was, I was devastated when a much anticipated family walk ended in disaster. It was the straw which broke the camel's back and I fell to my knees in prayer where I poured out my grief to God.

I promise I will now share with you a solution and then the resolution of the story.

4 Steps to Solve Life's Problems

1. Connect & Ask. This means to find a place to talk to God openly and honestly about our situations and challenges and then ask for help.
2. Listen & Record. This means take time to listen for ideas, inspiration and answers you will get and record them so you will remember to act on them.
3. Plan & Act. Sometimes we need to brainstorm or plan how we will break down how we will act on our impression. Then we can act on it.
4. Repeat. When we take action we will either find success or have a failure/learning lesson. If we succeed, we can repeat the process and ask God to teach us the next baby step in our life. If we fail, we go back and ask God to help us figure out the solution.

Promise

Answers come. They came for me. That night as I prayed to God he answered, "Tamara, this is normal for you." This changed my perspective to realize He knew me personally. He knew my name. He knew my situation and He would help me figure out how to solve problems in my own "normal for me" way.

Seven years later our family decided to hike Delicate Arch in Arches National Park in Utah. This was a huge undertaking! My husband and I prayed and asked God for help. We listened and recorded our ideas and thoughts. Then we made a plan: We would write on a piece of paper what we were doing to communicate with Nathan and then give him an iPod and headphones to distract him. We then began the hike.

My sweet family who couldn't even walk around the block together before then did the 3 mile, uphill hike to Delicate Arch. We did it together. It was a miracle.

We have since repeated this process and had many more successful hikes.

Invitation

Will you use these steps to problem solve in your life? I promise God is anxiously awaiting to connect and help you find your "normal for me" solution. He knows you. He knows your problem and He knows the solution if you will ask.

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You can read the transcript to todays episode here: https://tamarakanderson.com/podcasts/4-surefire-steps-to-solve-lifes-problems