The enormity of each person’s courage and achievements is incredible

It was end-of-year 1998 and my youngest daughter was only six-months old.  Up until then she hadn’t rolled.  We borrowed my parents’ video camera — (no fancy camera phones back then; I had a Nokia 5110) — and set ourselves the task of recording her first roll.  It took several days of tummy-time, coaxing, coaching and encouraging, and then finally late one evening we got it — on film no less!  We were over the moon, and the pleasure showed on our baby’s face; she knew she’d done something really special.

And then within seconds... another roll!  Completely not in the script!  We were ecstatic.

We had gone from thinking, “Is there something wrong with our little girl,” (as I’m sure all us parents have done) to thinking, “All our dreams have come true.”  Of course, this thinking only lasts a few seconds before reality kicks in.  There is always a ‘next’ goal.

Here’s a golden truth in the context of this article:

Life is one achievement after another after another after another, recurring.

~

THE BLESSING OF REFLECTION IN A SEASON OF REST

Speaking with someone going on maternity leave only yesterday, particularly around not being able to settle a baby, I was taken back to the four months of colic my first-born daughter had — 120 days of crying and screaming for about 5 hours per night.

We tried everything.  This experience gave us great empathy for the how quickly you feel insane, incapable of parenting, and even a danger to your own child.  Then there were the middle-ear infections (one after another), the UTIs, eventual ureter surgery (before four years of age), the several grommets operations with two daughters, etc.  And daughter number 2 didn’t thrive for six months!  You get the picture.  But we got through.  That was 28 years ago!

All this seems like much more than a lifetime ago when I consider how much I don’t even think about these events these days with so much going on in the present.  But what I’ve learned is that with a season of rest I’ve been afforded the opportunity (the Kairos) to look back and reminisce.

Only a day or so ago I pondered about just how many moments I’ve had in my life where I wasn’t sure I had the courage to meet the moment’s challenge — you know those moments were nervous anxiety or thoughts of “I can’t do this” seem to threaten to overwhelm.  Yet, by God’s grace and power, each one of these is like a trophy moment; our willingness is backed by God’s faithfulness.  We find so many moments we overcame.

MUCH OF WHAT SEEMS SMALL NOW WAS ACTUALLY LARGE

What strikes me is how insurmountable today’s challenges seem, when in hindsight the reality speaks for itself; each of us has achieved thousands of things by God’s power and grace.

All these seem like little things when viewed through the rear-view mirror of life.  But at the time they were not small at all.  They loomed large on the horizon.  And as they approached us, we girded up our strength, and met them with courage — each and every one of them.  We only need to think about the mountains we faced today or yesterday.  None of them were a synch to climb.

If we failed — and we’ve all experienced failure — inevitably we had another chance, or some other opportunity was offered to us.  An opportunity to mature was presented; to accept what didn’t happen and to embrace what would or could be, even as a result of failure.

With the prospect of failure, a premium was set on success.  As each of us considers what we’ve done and been through, each of you has achieved so much.  Some days were gargantuan, some weeks incessant, whole months of adjustment, and entire years where you endured.  You kept going.  And many of you have been tested for up to a decade or longer.

Even a single day comprises dozens of individual events, just as there are events within events.  It’s not just that your baby rolled when you’d been waiting weeks for her to do so.  

That child of yours has achieved a thousand things in their first years of life.  Just think of the plethora of challenges any of our children must overcome just to earn the rite of passage to adulthood.  Each of them is a hero for the tenacity they demonstrated by showing up in their lives when it would be easier to roll over and not get out of bed of a morning.

It’s time we celebrated more the simple things that are hard to do.  It’s not the Olympic Gold Medal but studying while holding down a job; balancing several roles at a time; stewarding dipping energy levels; battling a mental illness; helping your special needs child, day-in, day-out; going for a job interview; enduring knock-back after knock-back; remaining hopeful when there’s little hope on the horizon — all these are audacious.

So many of you balance these in multiples and you may not appreciate how heroic you truly are.  Just for a moment, imbibe the feeling that God is proud of you.

You are courageous and have achieved so much for you just being you.