This IS the Life You're Meant For 💪
you were not meant for comfort
The wind would often rattle the windows in the kitchen of my tiny Kosovar apartment. This village was remote: its one dirt road cut through the town and I lived along it, my kitchen overlooking the lake that locals would frequent on summer weekends. In the wet winters and springs, though, the unpaved road turned into slushy mud, making it near-impossible to drive on unless you had a tractor, or perhaps boarded the unpredictable bus that came more or less when the driver felt like it. There was also a span of time when the one bridge was destroyed1, meaning the only way into town was via a massively long detour around a rugged mountain, and most bus drivers didn't want to deal with the narrow muddy path encircling sharp drop-offs. Nor did I want to risk it.
This meant that there were insatiably lonely seasons when I occupied that kitchen. I was in my early twenties, and introvert though I was, I depended on interaction and hopeful kindred-spirit friendships with fellow English speakers roughly my age. My job was to teach English to the local teenagers, and I had plenty of work to do: these kids were woefully behind academically, having suffered most of their childhood in underground "schools" with rudimentary access to anything beyond elementary basics. Milosevic had ordered the blockage of all Albanians from attending local schools, and this was these teenagers' reality for most of their lives until NATO forces came in and ousted the despot. I hosted daily conversational classes around my kitchen table with adolescent men and women, and they came in droves. In their view, knowing English was their ticket to securing better jobs as adults (and they weren't wrong).
I was content with my work and my reason for being there, but it included that high price of loneliness, which ate at me. I'd ride the bus into the capital city whenever I could in order to secure groceries, enjoy a bit of anonymous city wandering, and treat myself to a cappuccino at an internet cafe, where I could also check my email and perhaps say hello to a faraway friend over IM chat2. I'd then return to my village more refreshed and able to continue my work for another week or two. This was dependent, as previously mentioned, on the unpredictable bus system (which, by the way, was also subject to badly paved or unpaved roads the entire route, leading to much carsickness, especially because the bus' interior was hot, crowded, and smelly, since the farming class inhabitants were also superstitious about wind and therefore never opened the windows).
The loneliness settled into my bones. There were nights when I literally had nothing to do—this was before wifi existed and I didn't have a television—so I'd just go to bed out of sheer boredom. I'd read all the books I'd brought, seeing as there weren't many to begin with in my limited luggage space (and this was obviously before Kindles). Women, especially young women, were discouraged from wandering around the village by themselves, since this was a traditional Muslim culture, and plus, there were still potential active landmines to watch out for post-war. The loneliness reached a fever pitch on the days when the electricity would go out, leaving me in the literal dark and cold in my apartment. I had to learn how to light the antiquated wood stove in my kitchen.
There were balms of encouragement, of course. My upstairs neighbors were an American family with four young children, and they'd invite me in frequently for lunches, dinners, and occasional movie or game nights—but I didn't want to overstay my welcome and encroach on their own family time. And even though Kosovo is geographically tiny, there was a strangely high number of fellow single NGO workers like myself, commissioned by NATO and other private entities to serve the people and help them get back on their feet3. I'd do my best to connect with these fellow English speakers in the capital city whenever I could.4
That season of life was hard. It asked me to do things I didn't think I was capable of, and it required me to lean into the difficulties and make them my refiner's fire instead of a litany of reasons to abandon my post. The reason for this wasn't because I was an especially noble person or unusually courageous. It was simply because I never doubted that this was where I was supposed to be.
Before going there there was no light split from the sky one afternoon with clouds spelling out Kosovo. There was simply a peace that, now that I had graduated college, I wanted to test the waters of living cross-culturally, and I was open to an opportunity that was a decent fit for me.
“All roads but one are bad roads for you, since they diverge from the direction in which your action is expected and required.”
- AG Sertillanges, OP // The Intellectual Life
A position opened up, I applied and went through the required steps for admission to the non-profit, and I was ultimately sent to this village. I chose it out of three other global options because I was interested in the culture of Eastern Europe and I liked the role of teaching conversational English. It was a position longer than a few months but without a long-term commitment, and all in all, the practicals seemed to say, “This is indeed your next step in life.”
And so it was. And it was stinking hard. But it didn't make it not where I was supposed to be.
In fact, those challenges made that season exactly what it was meant to be in my life: a sharpening of my convictions and a softening of my rough spots, a necessary refiner's fire to purify my mettle, shed the dross, and mature and grow me more into who God meant for me to be.5 Those challenges were the very reason I was meant to be there.
It was exactly the same spirit in which we're all called to rootedness.
Hard doesn't equal wrong.6 Challenges in life aren't a sign that you heard God wrong, or that it's time to do something else, or that you should consider a change in your situation. In fact, the presence of challenges are often signs that you’re exactly where God wants you to be.7
This is because the point of life isn't comfort or happiness; the point of life is to become more fully human. And the most human human to walk the earth was Jesus Christ, which means our life's pursuit should be pointed toward becoming like him—which is to say, a life of virtue as a habit.8
Whenever things are hard, don't wish the hard away—welcome it. Yes, use your brain and don't become sadistic, but I’d dare to say that's not the default problem for our softened, low-grit culture where we tend to escape into ease as soon as things are remotely challenging. Dare to see challenges as invitations to help you become more of who you’re meant to be. Pick up those challenges as tools to make you stronger and more capable at building whatever you're called to create.
I get it—this isn't easy. I'm not perfect at it, by a long shot. Right now as I write this the temps are in the teens and I'm bundled up in blankets as I look out on the frozen Texas roads9. Right now I'm called to homeschool two of my teenagers and trust God with a third who lives a thousand miles away at college. I’ve got a series of ongoing annoying ailments that remind me I’m no longer in my twenties or thirties. Life in a perpetual fixer-upper with limited funds and resources coupled with high inflation means living with less-than-pristine living conditions (I’m looking at you, rat who found a hole into our house this past weekend).
Maybe you’re a college student a thousand miles away who’s besotted with loneliness and doubt they’re where they’re supposed to be. Maybe you’ve got a gaggle of young children who seem to only demand of you that you meet their base desires and you’re simply longing for some adult company. Maybe you’re surrounded by disgruntled coworkers in a job that doesn’t pay you enough. Maybe you’re alone and long for a family of your own.
These are all very real challenges. And yes, pray for relief—trust God as you ask him for friends, for a better job, for a reprieve from the daily grind. Yet while you wait for those answers, pray that they’ll help remove your dross, and welcome these challenges as your refiner’s fire. Trust that you’re exactly where you're supposed to be and that this life is the life you're meant to live.
As I've said before, the real astonishment of life isn't that things are hard, it’s that anything is good at all. Most of us have a ridiculous amount of blessings with which to be thankful, an embarrassment of riches, each of them a captivating blessing to make our journey of a virtuous life more palatably sweet. What gifts they are.
Let’s be a people that doesn't shy away from hard things. Let’s let hard things have their way with us so that we emerge from those hard seasons as people more aligned with our true selves: loved by God, called for greatness and not comfort, and commissioned to be lights to the world. Our world, broken and seemingly becoming ever more broken by the day, needs us to be whole and human so others remember that they, too, and called to be whole and human.
Lean into the start of classes and college rigamarole this week. Lean into the quotidian routine of diaper changes and Costco runs. Lean into the late-night adolescent conversations that bring you to your knees. Lean into the call to care for our bodies, to steward our gifts, and to love our people no matter what. It’s what we're made for.
With you in the challenges of life—ora et labora, as always,
Tsh
Which was already a replacement bridge given by local NATO forces after Milosevic bombed the original one, trapping the Albanian villagers.
Young millennials and younger, ask an older friend what I'm talking about.
To this day, there's still a military presence there.
One of them eventually became my husband.
And yes, to introduce me to my husband as well.
And as I shared this essay's theme to my husband after I wrote this, he reminded me of a recent interview with Fr. Mike, when he phrased this idea as “Good doesn't equal easy.” I like that perspective, too.
Within reason, of course. We're not meant to be self-imposed martyrs.
Enter creating your Rule of Life, by I digress.
Yes, it's warmer than many of you up north, but we lack the infrastructure
This is beautiful. I’m constantly praying that I would be made into a person that I couldn’t be without these challenges.
I love your story-telling in here, Tsh, and the message as well. Thanks for the reminder.