What Can I Learn From the Hard Seasons of My Life?

There are moments in our lives that nothing in all the world can adequately prepare us for—and these moments ultimately define who we become next. These can include delightful moments of joy that make us well up (and overflow) with feelings of gratitude and “abundance.” 

When my first baby was placed in my arms, and I was transformed into “Mom” in an instant—that was definitely a “redefining me” experience! Or when I crossed the finish line of my first marathon, the medal draped over my neck while bagels and bananas were waved in my direction—that changed me too. 

I was transformed into a parent in one instant and transformed into a “Finisher” in the next. The latter was a moment marked not just by hours and minutes, but by the second on the timestamp too! It mattered. I had done a hard thing! (Something I was powerfully reminded of each time I tried to walk down stairs, or do anything that required me to bend my thighs close to a 90-degree angle, for the next 24-48 hours.)

I suppose these moments aren’t marked only by increments of joy and victory. These moments in my life also reoriented my relationship with pain. It changed my relationship with what I was nearly sure I could not do. From that time on, no other physical threat in my life ever held the same power it once had. 

Hard Things Change How We See Ourselves

Before those finish-line moments (both literal and figurative), I might have been tempted to see myself as weaker than I actually was. Now, when faced with the fear of physical pain in any of the days that followed, instead of thinking: “I could never do that!” I found myself instead thinking—“REMEMBER what you did?! Who knows?! You just might survive this next hard thing too?!” In the wake of a crisis, “I might survive” is like an A+ grade! Surviving is key. (Thriving can definitely hold off until much later!)

After braving the wild ups and downs of a hard thing, we gain new markers for where we’ve been and where we’re going next. Because, after all, it just might not be as hard as a marathon?! Or it might not take as long as natural childbirth did?! Or if it is (dare I say it) even harder than those things, then perhaps we are like a human holding a measuring stick of sorts in our hands. We may now measure this next challenge in hours of running or in how many breaths it will take to pant our way through it.

Or in my case, how many LOUD swooning sounds one needs to make until the painful contraction passes. Please note this last “measuring stick” may result in an anesthesiologist hinting to a husband that an epidural for his wife might quiet the sound reverberating in the hallways. (But I knew what I needed to do to get the job done! And it wasn’t gonna be quiet!) 

What Sorrow Gives Us

Ecclesiastes 7:3 says:

Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us.

I love to laugh. It is literally one of my favorite things in all the world. When I’m going through a really hard time, laughter is one of the things I long for, like a woman thirsting for a drop of water in a dry, unforgiving desert.

But I have a hunch that this verse has important guidance for us in hard seasons. In our sorrow, we may ultimately be gifted something that laughter could never have given us. I’ve heard it said: “If you’re going to go through hell and back, don’t come out empty-handed.” In seasons of hardship, we may be granted gifts the emptiest places in our stories really need. Nobody joyfully signs up for this. Nobody thinks of this as a preferred way.

But the voice of wisdom literature reads in Ecclesiastes 7:14: 

Enjoy prosperity while you can but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life.

I wonder what it is, dear sojourner, that God wants to fill your empty places with now? As we count breaths and feel like we’ve got both miles behind us and miles ahead in the desert wilderness of “hard,” what might God have for us that we would gain no other way? Let’s lean in a bit closer to the One who holds us in the middle of all the hard we are walking through today.