Hard Is Not the Same Thing as Bad: The Perspective Shift That Could Completely Change the Way You Mother

by Abbie Halberstadt

sometimes just muttering, “Hard is not the same thing as bad,” under my breath was the tiny perspective shift that allowed me to view my girls’ synchronized fits not as a personal attack on my sanity but as a chance for professional motherhood development.

Seasons of ease are not wrong or bad any more than hard ones are. They are good gifts from God. But when easy becomes our default or our expectation in most, if not all, scenarios, we have a problem.

Yes, it might be incredibly tough in certain seasons. You might be driven beyond your human capacity for patience and resourcefulness right into the arms of a God who loves you enough to refuse to allow you to stay in your comfort zone, unchallenged and unchanged—who adores you enough to give you the kind of hard that transforms you from someone who wishes she could live for Him into someone who’s doing it right now, even while she doubts her capacity to do it again tomorrow.

“Sometimes when we are called to obey, the fear does not subside and we are expected to move against the fear. One must choose to do it afraid.”

We are capable of doing way harder things than we give ourselves credit for, not because we deserve more credit but because God does.