Shirley
The art of doing hard things
Please let us normalise doing hard things or even going through a hard season. It is not the exception, you are not forgotten, you are simply living life!
Who can fault an easy and comfortable life. I mean isn’t it what we all dream of and imagine success in both our personal and career lives look like. I do not know about you but I love and crave an easy life that requires minimal effort but results in great reward. There I said it, my secret is out of the bag! So, as you can imagine the idea of a miracle that prevents one from doing hard things or going through a hard season has always filled me with much glee, and not for spiritual reasons unfortunately, but for purely fleshly reasons. I have always had this idea about miracles, that it involves God doing all the heavy lifting and my only responsibility is to avail myself and to receive. This ideology is something akin to a sugar rush (for those who know me you know how I love me some sugar). Put in the idea of an “easy” gospel, and this gets me extra excited. I know a very fallacious ideology right! It brings to mind this idea that you can cheat the system of life, and that somehow God is this genie who dolls out miracles that protect us from having to do anything hard or face anything that is hard in our lifetime. Though quite a charming and even romantic idea about life and salvation, it is an absolutely diabolical and misguided life philosophy.
An easy life seems like a wonderful concept, I mean really think about it, if life was all easy both emotional, physically, mentally and spiritually, how cool would that be? Easy things do not require me to push myself beyond doing the bare minimum or even force me out of my comfort zone. Further, the best thing about doing easy things is that we can often get away with doing things on our own strength, it is really easy- peasy. It gives us this false sense of confidence in our own ability because we naively think that we do not need God. In fact, there is this misguided philosophy that we sometimes often carry around that goes something like this: if something is for you, then it will be easy. I really wish life could be summarised like that, that the things that are good or even supposedly “for you” will always be easy to do or even to receive. However, we do not live in utopia or la la land, we live here on earth and if you live long enough you quickly come to realise that doing hard things or going through a hard thing is not the exception, but part and parcel of being alive.
Ironically, the easy things are not always the best for us. Indeed adulting 101 is: doing hard things is good for you! If you want a good marriage or relationship then you must do the hard work and make time for your spouse, and stay even if it is hard. If you want to have a good career then you must be willing to put in extra hard work, play politics and often go out of your comfort zone. If you want to have a wonderful single life experience then you must do the work to heal and truly get to know yourself and maximise the advantages of the season. If you want to be a good parent, then you will have to put in the work to not only spend time with your child or children, but read books and watch anything and everything on parenting. You must also figure out how to heal from your own childhood experiences so you do not pass you childhood dysfunctions onto your children. All the above are hard things to do. Then if you want to look good as you age, you must engage in a healthy diet and reduce your sugar, fat and alcohol intake, and make time for exercise, which are all hard things to do. When it comes to exercise, it does not matter how many times you get up early and exercise, although it becomes doable and even addictive, it’s still hard. It will cost you something! The same applies even when it comes to healing. Yes, healing from past wounds requires you to put in hard work. It requires putting aside your time and sometimes your money. It demands spending some alone time with God and truly seeking his face and asking him to search and heal you. Other times it requires also seeking a professional like a therapist or counsellor, with the hardest part being having to re-live what happened to you in the past, and to name it for what it was, and then forgive so that you can heal, now those are truly hard things to do!
I love how the bible has these gems of stories within it that are relatable and so excruciatingly vulnerable as we see bible characters being faced with having to intentionally choose to do the hard things as opposed to taking the easy route. Example, the stories of Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Queen Esther, David, Mary, Daniel, Moses, Paul, Mary, Job, Joshua, and even Jesus etc. All these people were faced at important junctures of their life to make the choice to do the hard thing and grow or to instead do the easy familiar thing, and remain stagnant.
There are two stories in the bible that particularly stand out to when it comes to doing hard things. Firstly, I think of the story of the Israelites after Moses had died and they were about to enter the promised land with Joshua, and God tells them the most interesting and contrasting thing. The verse says in Joshua 1: 1-9:
After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land, I swore to their ancestors to give them.7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Above God is telling Joshua they can finally cross into the promised land which he promised their ancestors, but then He also goes on to encourage him, highly suspicious if you ask me especially if you are of the easy and soft life school of thought like me (bear with me I am slowly recovering from this life philosophy). Basically, while God is telling Joshua that here is their promised land, He is also encouraging him like He is preparing him for something hard or even challenging. In fact, while giving them their promise God is actually giving Joshua and the Israelites a pep talks. The kind a sports coach gives his team in the locker room when they are about to face a tough opponent. You would think that if God is telling you that something is for you that you should just majestically walk into it without enduring anything hard in the form of conflict or struggle. Yet that was not the experience of Joshua and the Israelites. If you read on you will find that even if the promise was in their hand they still had to fight and claim it as theirs. Hence, if they had this easy or soft life mentality that a lot of us have, they probably would have run off believing that the land was not theirs because they would not have been willing to do hard things to claim it, and how tragic that would that have been.
Additionally, the story that moves me like no other is the story of Jesus the night before He was crucified. Now that is not only an inspiring, but also a vulnerable glimpse into what it truly cost Jesus to do the hard thing and die on the cross for our sins. This is evident in Luke 22: 39-44 which provides:
Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. 40 On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” 41 He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, 42 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” 43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.
Jesus was in so much pain that He not only asked God to take the cup away from Him if it was possible, but He was in so much anguish he was sweating blood. Yet He chose to do the hard thing and to willingly die for our sins.
These two stories speak to me on so many levels. They confirm to me that we need to normalise doing hard things or even going through a hard season. It is not the exception, you are not forgotten, it is simply part and parcel of living life!
So, what hard things is God asking you to do or what hard things do you know in your heart that you need to do in order to not only be healthier both emotionally and physically, but to also be a better sibling, friend, spouse, parent, child, leader, neighbour, and employee etc?