Handle Hard Better Video
Matt showed me a video this week on Youtube from the Women’s basketball coach at Duke. It’s been labeled Handle Hard Better. It’s a great quick video that all of us can learn from. Take a quick minute to watch it; it’s worth the time.
The simple fact of the matter is that life is hard. It’s never going to get easier. Instead, we have to learn how to bear up under that hard, handle the hard better. The better we handle the hard we’re dealing with now, the better we make it for the next thing we have to deal with.
Life Doesn’t Get Easier
Matt has a saying. “Life doesn’t get easier, but it gets better.” I don’t know that there ever comes a point and time in life when we say, “Wow. This is so easy right now.” School is hard. College is grueling. Having babies is exhausting. Raising children is no joke. Preparing teens for life is not for the faint of heart. Building a career is no easy feat. Choosing to stay married requires love and sacrifice. On and on the list goes. Life never gets easier, but it can get better. Why?” Because we learn how to handle life as it comes our way.
We can choose to live under our circumstances and let them crush the life and joy out of us, or we can choose to live above our circumstances. I like to think of it this way. We can choose to be a Tigger or an Eeyore. Except for Eeyore’s tail that always fell off, Tigger and Eeyore faced the same daily problems. But Tigger faced them with zeal and excitement, whereas Eeyore faced them with dread and depression.
We can’t choose our circumstances, but we can choose our response every time. We have to find joy even in the midst of bad circumstances. If we give ourselves permission to live without joy, to be depressed and discouraged, hopeless and defeated every time we face a hardship, our entire life is going to be like that. Because let’s face it. Life is hard! But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can find joy, no matter the circumtances. But it’s our job to find the joy, even in the midst of life’s hard.
Choosing to Find Joy
Shauna Niequist says in her book, I Guess I Haven’t Learned that Yet, that we are responsible to find joy. It doesn’t necessarily just come bubbling up. No, we have to chase it down; we have to choose to find it.
We also put ourselves in the path of joy, and sometimes, frankly, it takes a little muscle. I no longer wait for joy to rise up unbidden. I put myself in her path every chance I get, and extending myself in that direction delivers me to gratitude, to hope, to a cascade of things that tumble out after joy but don’t show up without a little effort on our part.
Shauna Niequist
Choose today to bear up under whatever hard it is you are facing. Choose to find joy. Learn to build some “muscle” with what you’re going through. If you do, it will make the next hard that comes your way just a little easier to deal with.
More Encouragement
For more encouragement on this topic, check out You Can’t Wait Until Life isn’t Hard to Be Happy or read Lysa TerKeurst’s book, It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way. The hardback is currently on sale on Amazon for $12.85.
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