Not one of us gets to go through life without doing hard things. I’ve done hard things. You have to. And yet, we expend an awful lot of energy trying to avoid the hard things.
Don’t do this, though. Don’t avoid the difficulties. You can do hard things.
Pressure Canning is Hard
We’ve been using our pressure canner for three years. Eric bought it for me for my birthday. He was all excited about it. I was, well, more hesitant.
This canner is huge, first of all. It can hold 19 pint jars at a time (that’s a lot) or 7 quart jars. (Eric tells me we could get the bigger one that would have allowed for twice the quart jars. I told him no.)
Also, it’s a pressure canner.
It’s a big pot with a big heavy lid that seals tight to process the jars under high pressure (thus the name), which is great because you can preserve whole bunches of things you can’t do any other way.
BUT, the process for pressure canning is much more complicated than water-bath canning. If you don’t do it right, the food can actually get bacteria that is dangerous (botulism, anyone?). Oh, and did I mention they can explode? If you do it wrong, they can explode.
Frankly, the thing scared me. And my scientist husband loved it. So for the first year, I made him check my seal on every batch. Or I just got him to do it. I’d wash jars and prep the food. But running the canner? How ’bout you just handle that, babe…
So he did. And we canned. And last year we canned some more, and I did more of it on my own. I read the instructions closely and repeatedly. I tried. But I also got him to help as much as I could.
And then, just a week or so ago, it hit me. I’d done almost all the canning this year. I still read the instruction book, but didn’t need it as often. I remembered the order of the steps. It was easier to trust myself. Somewhere along the way, I’d learned to use the pressure canner.
What Makes Hard Things Hard
It isn’t fun to do hard things. I get it. I mean, they’re hard. For a number of reasons.
- They are SCARY. Some things are hard because it terrifies us to try them. Maybe they’re new, like a pressure canner. Or they’re dangerous (also like a pressure canner). Maybe we don’t know how they’ll turn out. So we do our best to avoid them.
- They are SAD. Over the summer, my friend who is a foster mom said goodbye to two little people whom she had loved on and parented for 18 months. The grief was immense. Her heart was utterly broken. It was hard, and she still misses them dreadfully. Probably always will.
- Hard things are RISKY. We’ve never tried this before. We might fail. The canner might explode. Someone might laugh at us. It might end up on social media, and not in a good way. So we never start.
- They are REMINDERS. We’ve already done them once, and we don’t want to do them again. That test we have to retake. The weight we lost and gained back. And now we’re staring down the task of starting the whole process again. Some things are hard because they remind us of our weaknesses or failures or past mistakes. And we don’t like it.
You Can Do Hard Things
But even though all those things are true, I’m still convinced that you can do this. You can do hard things.
Do you know why?
Because over the years, we’ve already done hard things. I had twins. And learned to use a canner. You’ve left home and gotten married and said good-bye and lost a friendship. You graduated. You started a business. You’ve done all kinds of big, hard things.
But even more, you do the small, everyday hard things, too.
You can do hard things because this morning, you chose to start something when you could have gone back to bed. Maybe you sent that email. Or wrote the check.
And every day, you parent your children. Parenting is a different kind of hard every day. They don’t come with instructions. They throw all kinds of new things at you every day. And if you have multiple children, they all throw different things at you at the same times.
But you still get the house clean and the laundry done and the errands run. You get all the kids to all the places. It isn’t always perfect. Mostly it’s messy and real and hard.
But you do it. Every day. So you can do hard things today, too.
Help for the Hard Things
I am convinced you can do hard things. But I am also convinced we aren’t supposed to do hard things on our own.
I would never have survived my twin pregnancy without the family and friends who loved and listened and prayed and helped. I can use a pressure canner because I did the hard work of learning how. But I also had Eric and my mom and an instruction book to help me.
You can do hard things. But you can’t do them on your own. You will need help. So please don’t be afraid to ask for it.
Pray about it. God is ready and able to handle all of our hard things. As the Bible says, he’s already given us Jesus. He’s taken care of the biggest problem of all. So why do we think he can’t or won’t handle the rest of it? Talk to God about your hard things.
Get Support. You cannot do hard things without a ring of people (even just 2 or 3) whom you trust and who have your back. Spouses count. So does family. Friends too. Colleagues, advisors, therapists. Don’t worry so much about “finding your tribe.” Just start with the people you know and ask them to walk with you along the way.
Tell me. I can’t fix any of the hard things you have to do. I can’t make it better or alleviate the hard of a child with special needs or a broken heart or the tension of the impending birth of a new child.
But I’ll listen. I’ll pray for you. I’ll help you hold your hard thing. It would be a privilege. Because when we can hold each other’s hardships—not fix them or minimize them or throw out our favorite platitudes about them—when we hold each other’s hard things, they don’t feel so heavy. And they don’t feel so hard.
You can do hard things. So can I. But we’re going to need each other along the way. God intended it that way. And when we help each other along, it’s truly a beautiful thing.
