I think one of the most intimidating things about struggle is the fear that the pain will last forever.
Because forever is a long time and a single moment of struggle can feel like the arms on the clock have stopped ticking. The chaos of struggle can leave us doubting that a silver lining could possibly exist – doubt that anything good could ever come from the devastation that has become our lives.
The hope that once filled our lungs can slowly deflate leaving us gasping for the good times. Hope has slipped through my hands like sand in an hourglass. It seemed I could never make a fist tight enough to keep hope from slipping away. On my worst days I’ve been facing down on the couch, tears streaming down, fists clenched as I’m left to wonder if things will ever be the way I remembered them to be.
Struggle is uncomfortable and it brings us to our knees longing for the times when all was once right. Sometimes we feel powerless because we have no way to turn back time and rewrite the script that led us to the darkness we have found ourselves in. Thoughts of how we could have done things differently torment the mind trying to make us feel bad about the path that brought us to the moment we are facing right now. Or maybe it was the careless actions of another human being that has left the comfort of all we have ever known in ruins. In moments like these, when hope seems to have let us down, one thing remains – we are here and we survived. There is breath in our lungs, tears flowing down, and pieces of broken hearts: all signs that we are alive.
The waves of struggle try to crash higher and wider than us to make us feel weak and incapable of surviving, and it tries its best to detach us from hope so that we can’t see past the fog of disappointment. Struggle will always try to keep us locked away in the should have, could haves and would haves of the past so that we never dare to wander into the possibility of the present. All of this pain and turmoil is just a temporary distraction attempting to derail you from all the potential that lies beyond the circumstances of your now.
But the struggle is hard to endure and fighting the good fight is a challenge. Sometimes the whirlwind of struggle will knock you down and it’s easy to get lost in the confusion and forget that it is always possible to survive. The oxygen that filled your lungs in the greatest joys of life still exists in your deepest valley of struggle. And struggle can torment, it can discourage but the one thing it can’t do is rob you of the right to persevere and conquer. Regardless of where you are in the ebb and flow of struggle you are here and you have survived and that’s an amazing thing. It doesn’t matter if you are hanging on by a thread, face down on the floor or are still left standing because either way you are already surviving the struggle that you never thought you could make it through...
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