I’m currently rereading Rising Strong by Brene Brown. (I recommend her books, though you’d likely want to start with one of the others, The Gifts of Imperfection or Daring Greatly.) And it has given rise to some additional thoughts about challenges, and courage. I’ve touched on some of my thoughts in Strength Building Exercises and The Balance of Comfort and Change. But something else has occurred to me.

The hard work is not going to look like I expect. I have to take what I find and make it the work that transforms me. Take the challenges that come; the ones that life brings, all unexpected.

Making challenges of my own is excellent, difficult work, but it serves me best only if I can resist the urge to let that be an excuse to refuse to engage with the difficulties life offers. And, oh, that is such an easy trap to fall into. Why should I have to take charge of the unexpected? Just look at all of this difficult, excellent work I’ve already been doing! That should be enough!

But it isn’t enough. It’s training. Training for the things that are hardest of all for me–things I couldn’t plan for in advance. It’s my job to show up, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

And the element that I was reminded of in my reading is this: I am going to thrash around against this job, every damn time. It’s going to be an ugly fight to make myself do what’s right. That’s just part of the process. That is what it looks like, doing the right thing when it’s hard. It’s not pretty. It’s not clean. It’s not comfortable. It sucks. To some degree it probably always will. My judgement and my feelings will have to throw down and kick each others’ asses some before I can move forward. I’m going to be confronting that cranky inner five-year-old and her deeply stubborn ‘But I don’t WANNA!’ again and again.

And I need to remember, most of all, it’s okay if that process takes some time. Permission to work through that resistance, to take that time, I give myself. Permission to avoid the unexpected challenges of life? Nope.

So there’s my compromise, and my burgeoning strength.