Learning to Handle the Hard Better

I think there is something a little crazy about the way we go through life waiting for things to get easier.

Maybe instead of waiting for life to get easier, we need to learn how to handle the hard better.

We tell ourselves, “When this happens, things will be better.”

If we had more money, our problems would go away. If we had a bigger house, we would be happier. If we had different friends, things would be easier. If work wasn't so stressful. If the kids were older. If we could just get through this difficult season, then life would finally settle down.

Wrong. Different problems follow.

Because we all know people who have plenty of money and still have problems. People with beautiful homes who aren't happy. People who seem to have everything together but are still struggling.

The truth is, life is hard. For everyone. The hard may look different for each of us, but none of us gets through life without disappointment, loss, stress, change, or things we never saw coming.

So maybe the goal isn't to make life easier. Maybe the goal is to learn how to handle the hard better.

I learned this in a very real way when I went through my divorce. I knew my life was going to get so much harder. And it did. There was no magic moment when everything suddenly became easy. I just had to get up each day, shake it off, and find my way forward. I learned to break things down into more manageable pieces and focus on what was right in front of me. The what ifs and worrying about where I would be in one year or five years kept me awake at night.

Looking back, I feel incredibly lucky that I was working at St. Mary's when everything happened. I honestly cannot imagine getting through that time in my life without the people God placed around me. My prayer warriors loved me and prayed for me through my diabetes diagnosis, cancer battle, and then my divorce. Their prayers, encouragement, friendship, and simply being there reminded me that I was never really walking through it alone. On the days when I didn't feel like my prayers were being heard, I still had faith in my circle of friends. Maybe not always in myself, but definitely in them.

That experience taught me something about faith that I am still learning today. God doesn't promise that our lives will be easy. He doesn't promise that we won't experience loss, disappointment, illness, or heartbreak. But He does remind us that we don't have to face those things alone.

There are so many people suffering in such big ways that sometimes I wonder how I can feel sorry for myself when I know someone else may be carrying something even heavier. But I am learning that someone else's suffering doesn't make mine disappear. God meets us where we are, even when what we are carrying feels small compared to someone else's burden.

Maybe that is what handling the hard better looks like. Taking the next step when we don't know what the next ten steps look like. Praying when we don't have answers. Accepting help. Finding God in the ordinary moments, even when the ordinary feels anything but easy.

Instead of asking God, “When is this going to get easier?” Maybe I should be asking, “God, how are You going to help me through this?” Because what if it doesn't get easier?

Maybe life isn't about waiting for the hard to go away.

Maybe it is about learning to walk through it with more faith, more trust, and more grace.

Life is going to be hard sometimes. That's not a failure of faith. It is simply part of being human.

But we don't have to do hard alone. And maybe that is one of the greatest gifts God gives us: the people He places beside us to help us handle the hard a little better.