Learning to Love the Good But Hard Life

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Learning to Love the Good But Hard Life
KATHERINE WOLF

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“Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides.” James 1:2 (MSG)

No matter what chaos the day holds, my family can count on one constant: our bedtime routine.

To clarify, I don’t mean precious hours of bonding over bath time, book reading, teeth brushing and storytelling. We have two young boys, so hygiene and calm often go by the wayside, and at the end of most full days, we can barely manage wrestling them into their pajamas and tossing them in bed.

Yet, over the years, we have wired their brains and ours to expect every night to end with us praying together as a family, one by one. Though our boys have experienced challenges and been exposed to hard stories, they often revert to the prayer that lies just below the surface of most every human heart: “Dear God, thank You for giving me a GOOD day today. Please help me to have a GOOD day tomorrow.”

If the “good/good” prayer happens to be recited on a given night, we usually then pray over them: “And God, no matter what kind of day today was, or what kind of day tomorrow might be, give us courage to keep showing up, because we know You are with us, God, and You always give us everything we need.”

For good measure, we may throw in this final charge as they drift off: “James and John, God made you to do the HARD things in the GOOD story He is writing for your lives.”

Honestly, we’re giving that charge to our own hearts, too.

The Bible writer James says, “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way” (James 1:2-4).

This way of viewing our hardships feels so unnatural, if not impossible. How could we view our suffering, our unmet expectations, our losses as a gift? Most anyone who has lived a little bit of life knows that storms come with the territory. It’s an unavoidable reality in this world. So, if we cannot change it or even pray it away, what can we do?

Well, for a start, we can redefine how we view goodness.

The “good life” isn’t one that lacks hardship, but rather, one that requires it. As James teaches, we will be incomplete and immature if we don’t go through challenges. And that truth doesn’t have to make us afraid.

So much of our mental energy is spent fearing what might happen in the future or staying stuck in shame and regret for what has happened in the past. What if we chose to view our inevitable hardships as the path to experience the goodness of God even more powerfully? As the avenue to our healing? As the truly abundant life?

The good and the hard things in life aren’t mutually exclusive. We hold them in bittersweet tension together because the good/hard life offers a depth to our experience with God and our compassion with others that we can’t get any other way.

This redefining leads to our refining. It won’t happen overnight. And it won’t happen unless we open our hands, releasing control over what we thought our life should be in order to receive God more fully.

In this process, we can find gratitude and even joy because we know a new kind of perseverance, character and hope will be ours.

Dear God, give us courage to fully live the good/hard life with joy. We pray to be found faithful in the midst of whatever hurts You allow in our lives. May our most longed-for healing be the healing of our souls. Fill us so fully with Your Spirit and Your hope that it overflows from us into the world. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.