Why “You can do hard things” only gets us halfway there
You might have seen the phrase “You can do hard things” on some social post, dropped into some feel-good self help mantra, or another 21st century version of the cross stitch in our grandmothers bathroom (which I call meme theology).
And we can.
And many of us have done very hard things over the last couple of years. I know I have.
But it only gets us halfway there.
As I reflect and flip through my journals, I see plenty of hard things. Big lessons learned through big situations. Time of prayer, deep internal work, sessions with my counselor, conversations with coaches, and honest words from trusted friends. I have done very hard things.
The problem I have with that phrase now is that it doesn’t do something pretty important.
It doesn’t really honor the journey.
When things get bad, we can’t just pep talk ourselves out of them. The degree to which they are hard is usually equal to the degree of personal work that we will have to do in order to overcome them. For me, as a Christian and a pastor, it usually means tons of personal prayer of the pleading variety. “You can do hard things” or whatever grammable phrase is being used at the moment doesn’t talk about that long night of personal awareness, struggle, internal discovery, and actual life changes that are made to move through it.
Lately, I have been running through the teachings of Jesus when he talks about asking, seeking and knocking (I actually preached on some of it last week, you can get the podcast audio here). It seems to recognize the process of personal frustration and the long road of internal and external change. I mean, if something is serious for us…we are going to be doing all of the things we can to discover the way out.
Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.Matthew 7:7-8 NLT
That verse is pretty crucial, but I think it is easy to get lost inside of it. I don’t know if it’s because of sentimentality, or just the fact that it sounds cryptic, but I don’t really think it is the end of the thought, but rather the beginning. As I read through scripture, and make notes of where else I see the echoes of this passage, it really helps bring things into a better perspective. The one that really helped me understand this process is from the Psalms.
Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him.Psalms 105:4 NLT
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of scripture. I will gladly accept the title of Bible Nerd. One of the reasons this verse begins to really tease out the notion of “seeking” in a less clinical way. While I don’t claim to be an expert in any means, there is a difference in Biblical language here that makes me find comfort. Greek, which the New Testament is written in, is typically more structured. In seminary someone once told me that engineers make the best Greek students. Hebrew, which the majority of the Old Testament is written in, is for the artists.
Defining “seek” in the New Testament is rather straightforward. In the Old Testament, we begin to see answers to our quest of “doing the hard things.” Seeking is a pretty large part of the Old Testament and you can find it all over the place, but at its most basic definition, it is defined as “to tread a place.” To walk and cut a path that tells the story of consistently and regularly mull over the issue needing clarity. Much like how your dog might always walk the same path in the backyard and wear the grass down, our "seeking" creates a spiritual and emotional trail through our life.
Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash
When I was in college there was this old road out in the country we called "stagecoach road" and over the years it was a dirt road that had slowly cut itself down below ground level, at times you could only squeeze one vehicle between two banks. It was beautiful. I'm sure folks have taken pictures of it for instagram. It looks like the nice easy side of seeking. A total "you can do hard things" type of trail...where none of the struggle is apparent and it doesn't seem like you even had to do that much work.
Earlier this year I read a biography of Daniel Boone and what was striking was a few passages about what it was like clearing the Cumberland Gap, and enabling settlers to drive livestock and wagons through the Appalachian mountains and into Kentucky and the greater west.
“The second task of Boone’s assignment was to hack a trail out of the wilderness, through Cumberland Gap, into the promised land along the Kentucky River. There was neither time nor means to build a road wide enough for wagons to travel. But a path adequate for packhorses and riders, clearly marked, would serve. Rivers and creeks would still have to be forded and canebrakes threaded through, but such a road would strengthen the claims to the Kentucky land. Henderson and Boone understood that such a road was a necessary and practical thing. But it was also a psychological and symbolic effort. Whoever opened a road into the wilderness already had a superior claim on the land. Building a road, establishing access to a region, was, from Roman times, an expression of acquisition, ownership. Emperors were road builders. No one would ever again think of a region as just Indian territory once a road had been opened into it…There has been a great deal of confusion over the years about what Boone’s Trace actually was. The name is so well known, so familiar to all, it is often assumed to be a real road, a kind of highway cut and graded through the mountains. But with no equipment for digging and excavation, the company with Boone was prepared only to clear away trees and brush, logs and rocks, for riders and packhorses to pass through the woods. It would be years before wagons could be brought through Cumberland Gap, more than two decades. At the time, it was not called the Wilderness Road, but Boone’s Trace or the Road to the Old Settlements. The term Wilderness Road seems to have come into use later, about 1796. The crew’s job was to make the trace clear and passable to those who would follow them. They chopped trees and saplings, brush and limbs, briars and vines, out of the way. They likely moved rocks and logs horses might stumble on, and found shallow places in streams for easy fording. They took the path around bogs and sinkholes near the creeks, and cut a way through canebrakes and curtains of grapevines…Wherever possible, the axemen followed trails already beaten down by migrating herds. With few instruments, probably only a compass, Boone made no attempt at straight lines, but followed openings in the forest, the lay of the land, old fields, animal trails. Winding through mud and fast creeks, canebrakes, and overhanging limbs, the way was a road in name only. But it was a trace, meaning simply it was a route that was marked and could be followed. Leaving the Warrior’s Path north of Flat Lick, Boone then guided his crew northwest along an old hunter’s trail called Skaggs’s Trace to Hazel Patch. From there he turned due north through several creek and river valleys toward the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River. Richard Henderson, who followed with the main body of immigrants, found the trace Boone’s men had made, “most of it hilly, stony, slippery, miry or brushy.” It may have been hard to negotiate in places, going this way and that, taking advantage of openings in the wilderness; but people could follow it, at first by the dozens, then by the hundreds, and later by the thousands.
— Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan
“You can do hard things” doesn’t talk enough about the context of the hard for me. The sort of seeking that many of us have to do in our lives isn’t some smooth road of life, but it’s like what Boone had to do. It takes days but feels like it takes ages. And it sometimes is only able to be seen because you know the work that has been done. And as we keep on going over and over (sometimes endlessly) the same things, a path gets beaten down. And if we make the journey all the way to the end, we find out we have cleared a way. From what once was to what will be. And we know that path because it wasn’t easy. But because we have taken on the hard work of what’s going on, others can now go through it as well. The folks that we love, the folks that we tell the story to, the folks that we might not have ever met…but they’ve been impacted by the work we’ve done.
I don’t want to hear “you can do hard things” again. I’m happy to throw 5 second meme theology out of the window. I’ll take the words of Jesus telling me to spend the time to carve out the path. I’ll find comfort in those words from the Psalms, and I know that the strength needed for life will be found in the journey.
I’m up for it and I hope you are as well
Do you want more devotional content from me? I’ve got an email list I send a couple of emails a month to that is focused on spiritual development and the deeper Christian life. I’d love to have you on the list.