What I Remind Myself When Life Isn’t Easy

It happened again today. Life got hard.

My day started out with great promise of ease. By eight o’clock in the morning, all three of my kids had eaten a healthy breakfast, were dressed with their shoes on and we joyfully walked to school.

Photo Credit: Theresa Martell, Creative Commons

Then as the day progressed, guess what? Life happened.

And life, my friends, is hard.

It started with the news that my son might need tubes in his ears, which is not a big deal really, but requires action on my part and adding actions to my already overloaded list of things to do is hard. Then, a call from my daughters school letting me know she had a “bowel movement” in her pants.

That’s right friends, my seven year old pooped her pants, at school. And the cherry on top, or rather the straw that broke the camels back, or the “something” that hit the fan…

As I drove to the school to drop off clean clothes, I started to cry.

Why dear Lord does everything have to be so hard?

I don’t know about you, but I am often working my butt off to make life a little bit easier. And I have found my pursuit to “easier” is an uphill climb, which in and of itself is not easy.

Sometimes the pursuit to easy is harder than just letting life be hard.

When my daughter got home from school, I took her dirty clothes out of the plastic bag in her backpack. I had every intention of washing them but as I opened up the bag I thought, “I don’t have time for this crap.”

So I threw the dirty undies and skirt in the outside trashcan.

Often times life is about choosing our battles.

Looking at the list of difficult things required of us and from time to time taking items off of the list and throwing them straight into the trash.

That night as I made “no-bake” cookies for her teacher, complete with a note that said “because no one should have to clean up another kid’s poop” (it took everything in me not to say the word I really wanted to say, but it’s first grade, so I censored myself!)…

I had a moment of clarity.

Maybe this journey I’m on is not about being easy, but about simply embracing what is.

My son might need tubs in his ears, but so what? My daughter pooped her pants, but so what? Maybe tomorrow I’ll find myself skipping down a sidewalk on Easy Street. But I’m pretty confident I won’t.

So rather than try to make my day unfold in a way that makes life a little easier, I’m learning to embrace the idea of simply putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out.

I’m trying to hold on with two hands to the life in front of me instead of working hard to make it something I think I want it to be. And in so doing, I am remembering that, as Jesus walked the earth, one foot in front of the other, breathing in and breathing out, his pursuits were for many things, but an easier life never made the list.

This morning, as I opened the refrigerator to grab my hazelnut creamer to add to a fresh cup of coffee, I spotted the extra no-bake cookies from last night.

I grabbed one, and as I took a bite, I thought how thankful I can be for these little moments of reprieve, even in the midst of a life that’s hard—a life that sometimes is filled with piles of poop.