Happy Birthday Dad! I’m celebrating your birthday by drinking a frosty and reading Socrates!

This was the message from our daughter, Stefanie, to her dad on August 31st, his birthday. The easy and the difficult, the fun and profound, the secular and sacred all combined. What a great statement on life from a college freshman.

While frosties represent all that is easy, delicious and non thought requiring, Socrates represents all that is difficult, often hard to swallow and requires analysis and thought. Combining the two strikes me as the best of balance. That’s why the weekend is a gift. It is often the time where, even in the worst of weeks, we give ourselves permission to relax. We give ourselves permission to lay aside heavy thoughts, feelings and issues, knowing they will have to be picked up and faced come Sunday evening or at the latest, Monday morning.

Whenever there is something difficult to contemplate it helps to know that it can go down with something smooth – like a frosty. The beloved Disney musical version of Mary Poppins knew a little about this and the words to the song “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! In the most delightful way!” speak clearly to the importance of medicine but a recognition that there is a way to make the medicine in life go down a little easier.

I used to think it was denial when I wanted to put aside the hard and focus only on the easy. And certainly, if it was a steady diet of ease, ignoring what needs to be faced, I would begin to worry. But no one in the world I live in has a life of ease. Rather there’s a lot of ups and downs, unknowns and hard stuff all mixed in with those days where life feels a little bit perfect. Setting aside the hard for a time or mixing it up with a frosty is balance and will smooth out those hard-earned wrinkles on the forehead.

So pick up a frosty and Socrates, or a latte and Lamentations, or a Pepsi and Plato…whatever you need to face that which is difficult and takes thought and analysis, and enjoy the weekend ahead as God intended.