You Can Do Hard Things

I asked on my personal Facebook page a few days ago what people would want to see me write about. A longtime friend mentioned I should write about balancing all the different parts of life and finding peace in the midst of it all. Really, that is so humbling of a request because finding balance in life as a mom, wife, and adult with all the different hats to wear and things to do is very hard. So often I feel in the middle of the moment that I am failing and that it is just too hard to do. But there is a statement that I have been fixating on in teaching my kids to be overcomer in their own lives: You can do hard things.

I can do hard things.

Such a simple statement with so much power, and quite honestly how I have tried to live my life over the past 6 or so years when life simply seemed too much and too hard and a big blur of overwhelm. You see, it first acknowledges that it is true that what we face is indeed hard. Life is hard. Hard looks different for each one of us. There is the daily grind kind of hard. There is the huge obstacle kind of hard. There its the chronic type of hard. I could probably write a whole chapter of a book on each specific kind of hard we as women might face. Life can be so very hard.

It is okay, and actually vital, to acknowledge what we face is hard. I don't know about you, but sometimes I have this little voice in my head, the voice of the accuser, who whispers to me that it is just me - that others would be able to do whatever is before me easily and there must be something wrong and broken about me that it feels hard. Listening to that voice long enough, I will start to agree with it and belittle myself for not being able to "live up." "What is wrong with you?" On and on the accusations flail. But quieting my mind and just saying, "No, this is actually hard, even if everyone in the world could do it easily, it is hard for me... but I can do hard things." 

You, and I, my friend, can do hard things. Life might throw so many various curve balls at you, sometimes one that threatens to take your very breath, and hope, away. But you were made to be an overcomer. You can do hard things. One. day. at. a. time. Sometimes one moment at a time.   

And so today I want to just leave you with that - you can do hard things. Whatever it is you are facing right now in this very moment, you can access the Spirit of the Living God and ask Him for His strength and then you can do that hard thing before you. 

I will leave you with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote that I read this week that just resounded with me: 

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

Charis