Saturday, January 11, 2014

You Can Do Hard Things

My first year of seminary was hard.  I suppose it is for most people, but I just couldn't seem to adjust.  Not to city living or the cold of Chicago or the extreme amount of reading.  I couldn't figure out how to use the library - the last time I'd done research the library had a card catalog!  It seemed like I couldn't understand the discussions in many of my classes, and I just couldn't seem to figure out what the word, "postmodern" meant, even though it was the word most used by my professors.  I felt very far away from everything and everyone that was familiar, and I was becoming suspicious that my decision to sell everything I owned to follow God was the wrong one.

On one of my breaks I visited my friends Dan and Kathy Backlund in Sewanee.  As I whined and lamented about how hard seminary was, one of them said to me, I think it was Dan, "You can do hard things."  My first reaction was to argue, "Yes, but..."  Yes, I can do hard things, but not as hard as seminary.  And then I realized he was right.  There are many people in this world who have endured much more difficult lives and done much harder things than I have, but I have done hard things, too.  I endured my intern year at Actor's Theatre of Louisville, working 80-100 hour weeks and contracting the chicken pox in the middle of the Human Festival of plays.  I got through my mom having cancer twice (though admittedly that was much harder for her than for me.)  I have survived things that I don't care to share on a blog, and I have certainly worked hard.  I CAN do hard things.

I am so grateful to Dan for saying it to me.  It really brought me up short because I realized that I had gotten into a pattern of complaining.  Yes, seminary was hard, but it wasn't as hard as I was making it out to be.  And I am able to do hard things.  In just one sentence Dan challenged me.  Over the years since then, I have remembered what he said.  Sometimes it takes me awhile, and there are certainly times when I just want to complain about the difficulty of an undertaking.  But the truth is, I can do hard things. 

So can you.  If there's something weighing you down or making your life hard right now, remember, "You can do hard things."  We are stronger than we think we are.   

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