Why am I always surprised by my hard?
Maybe it’s because I prefer easy. Fun is even better. Call me crazy, but hard is something I don’t always embrace on my resume.
I like those seasons when I’m sitting on a beach chair watching the sun go down thinking about what to cook for dinner.
I think that last happened 2 years ago one afternoon.
But in between those days are real days. Days of getting up early and tending to a child, and worrying about aging parents, and making your rent, and meeting deadlines, and wondering if your book will start to sell, and paying taxes, and never having enough time, and being alone when you don’t want to be, and being hounded when you wish you were alone.
I don’t know about you, but I personally would like to sidestep those parts of my life. However I’m realizing that may not leave much else.
There appears to be something in the mundane and the difficult and the painful and the “not what I would have chosen” stuff that we’re supposed to get down here. And possibly, learn to live differently.
I’m reminded of words I wrote but have a hard time living. (don’t you hate that?)

But in the meantime, if you need some perspective into your hard, let me offer you a peak into my head this morning. I was having trouble getting out of bed cause of all the things I have to do and all the things I can’t control. And I started feeling depressed.

But since I’m writing this chapter about “Living without” in my new book, I suddenly I started thinking about the fact that I had a bed. From there I went to the filled up fridge and the coffee brewing on its own. A gym membership I’m about to go to because I will sit all day writing if I don’t hop on a machine. It was only 7 am and I’d already thought of three very easy things in my “hard”.

Then I looked at my fridge and saw my three Compassion kids beaming at me. Wonder what they’ve been up to this morning? I’m guessing no thick mattressed beds, no coffee. No gym membership. They get plenty of exercise walking 2 miles to school. In the one outfit they have. For the one meal they’ll eat.

Then I think about an image I’ve been trying to push out of my head for the last couple weeks. Twelve faceless bodies who kneeled only to One. How were they able to stand firm with that kind of hard? Could I?

Then my mind wanders to African Mothers who send their kids down sex trafficking streets each day because they’re desperate to get a jug of clean water. More than hard.

And then I wander back to my home town where people wake up in the middle of wealth homeless. It’s another kind of hard to look at mansions when you don’t have money to eat.

Suddenly my hard is relative.

And might have even just become a little easier.