This is what I need to read today. My family is getting ready for a change in living situation which I’m both looking forward to and not at the same time. There will be plenty of challenges ahead but also the opportunities to make great family memories.
So so good! This reinforces the writings I am following by Joshua Luke Smith. The theme is “This is the Main Event ~ The Life You Long For is Hidden in the Life You Have.”
Such a good, encouraging word. I'm so prone to looking back at things that were hard as if they were failures -- as if these challenges were pass/fail, when perhaps the whole point is not the thing itself but the growth it produced in us. I appreciate your acknowledgment that sometimes these hard and big decisions are as simple and hard as looking for the "good enough" fit and then choosing to make the most of it. Not that prudence and discernment and wisdom are not part of it, but that we should expect even the right thing to be full of its own difficulties, and that when it is, it doesn't mean we're wrong for doing it.
Yep, very much so. There's absolutely nothing this side of heaven that's perfect, so why expect it in anything? Sounds fatalistic, but it's the opposite—it's recognizing the reality that even in hard things, there's good to be had.
Beautiful and SO perfectly timed for me! “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” -St. Joan of Arc is my 2024 motto and “Fiat” my One Little Word to be with me in what looks to be a very difficult year ahead. Saint Peregrine is my companion Saint.
"All roads but one are bad roads for you, since they diverge from the direction in which your action is expected and required.” This quote terrifies me. What if the road I'm on, the one I think is the right one, really isn't? I've always told myself that, even if I get it wrong, God will make it right, but this quote says otherwise.
lovely story, Tsh. I felt just like you as a 18 year old volunteer in the Westbank when the second Intifada broke out. Lonely, cut off from the rest of the world, with the occasional visits in Jerusalem to get my mail (they did not deliver mail to the West Bank!) and yes, to have a cappuccino or some ice cream just to feel like a normal person again (which is also telling how little freedom people in the Westbank had back then and today). And still, I never doubted to be where I was. It almost feels funny in hindsight and I am not sure if I would want to do the same job now, 30 years older. But we wouldn't be human if we would not also wish for an easier task sometime!
Woof. I read this piece this morning and then and I went back and re-read it tonight in a quiet house. Thank you.
It reminds me of C.S. Lewis quote from "The Screwtape Letters" that has gnawed at me this year:
"Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient in his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have gotten married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspirations to laborious doing."
Thanks for sharing, Tsh! I'm in a season right now where it feels like a lot of people are leaning on me - and I'm happy and grateful to be able to help! But it's difficult. And I have to brace my feet in order to fully lean into it.
Not sure if you're familiar with N.D. Wilson, but your message today reminded me of this quote from Death by Living:
"Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded--under torch and hammer and chisel--into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God."
What a great encapsulation of such a profound mystery of life. I think we all know this to be true in our souls, but the world tells us exactly the opposite as soon as we're out of the womb that we resist it so strongly to our own detriment. I really hope that I can teach this truth to them, even though it does take our own experience to really embrace it.
So much goodness to chew on here. My husband lost his job in October and we are putting the house we just bought two years ago on the market next month. It has been a weird, hard, wonderful season and I just keep asking God to teach us how to live this story with Him.
I absolutely love this-"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."
The hardest time for me to be okay with hardships or challenges is when I have a stomach virus. Ha!
I love your story-telling in here, Tsh, and the message as well. Thanks for the reminder.
Thanks!
This is beautiful. I’m constantly praying that I would be made into a person that I couldn’t be without these challenges.
Same.
good encouragement for perspective shift in seasons of hard.
This is what I need to read today. My family is getting ready for a change in living situation which I’m both looking forward to and not at the same time. There will be plenty of challenges ahead but also the opportunities to make great family memories.
Sounds like you’ve got some grit-building ahead of you, Morgan! 😉
So so good! This reinforces the writings I am following by Joshua Luke Smith. The theme is “This is the Main Event ~ The Life You Long For is Hidden in the Life You Have.”
Ooh, what a great way to put it.
Such a good, encouraging word. I'm so prone to looking back at things that were hard as if they were failures -- as if these challenges were pass/fail, when perhaps the whole point is not the thing itself but the growth it produced in us. I appreciate your acknowledgment that sometimes these hard and big decisions are as simple and hard as looking for the "good enough" fit and then choosing to make the most of it. Not that prudence and discernment and wisdom are not part of it, but that we should expect even the right thing to be full of its own difficulties, and that when it is, it doesn't mean we're wrong for doing it.
Yep, very much so. There's absolutely nothing this side of heaven that's perfect, so why expect it in anything? Sounds fatalistic, but it's the opposite—it's recognizing the reality that even in hard things, there's good to be had.
This was so timely for me!
Beautiful and SO perfectly timed for me! “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” -St. Joan of Arc is my 2024 motto and “Fiat” my One Little Word to be with me in what looks to be a very difficult year ahead. Saint Peregrine is my companion Saint.
"All roads but one are bad roads for you, since they diverge from the direction in which your action is expected and required.” This quote terrifies me. What if the road I'm on, the one I think is the right one, really isn't? I've always told myself that, even if I get it wrong, God will make it right, but this quote says otherwise.
lovely story, Tsh. I felt just like you as a 18 year old volunteer in the Westbank when the second Intifada broke out. Lonely, cut off from the rest of the world, with the occasional visits in Jerusalem to get my mail (they did not deliver mail to the West Bank!) and yes, to have a cappuccino or some ice cream just to feel like a normal person again (which is also telling how little freedom people in the Westbank had back then and today). And still, I never doubted to be where I was. It almost feels funny in hindsight and I am not sure if I would want to do the same job now, 30 years older. But we wouldn't be human if we would not also wish for an easier task sometime!
Woof. I read this piece this morning and then and I went back and re-read it tonight in a quiet house. Thank you.
It reminds me of C.S. Lewis quote from "The Screwtape Letters" that has gnawed at me this year:
"Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient in his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have gotten married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspirations to laborious doing."
Thanks for sharing, Tsh! I'm in a season right now where it feels like a lot of people are leaning on me - and I'm happy and grateful to be able to help! But it's difficult. And I have to brace my feet in order to fully lean into it.
Not sure if you're familiar with N.D. Wilson, but your message today reminded me of this quote from Death by Living:
"Man is born to trouble. Man is born for trouble. Man is born to battle trouble. Man is born for the fight, to be forged and molded--under torch and hammer and chisel--into a sharper, finer, stronger image of God."
I heard that quote years ago but had forgotten it. Thanks for the reminder!
Came back to have another read through at the end of the day. This is so, so good. Thank you Tsh!
I'm so glad, friend!
What a great encapsulation of such a profound mystery of life. I think we all know this to be true in our souls, but the world tells us exactly the opposite as soon as we're out of the womb that we resist it so strongly to our own detriment. I really hope that I can teach this truth to them, even though it does take our own experience to really embrace it.
So much goodness to chew on here. My husband lost his job in October and we are putting the house we just bought two years ago on the market next month. It has been a weird, hard, wonderful season and I just keep asking God to teach us how to live this story with Him.
I absolutely love this-"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."
The hardest time for me to be okay with hardships or challenges is when I have a stomach virus. Ha!