Endurance

After two exhausting days where my spirit, body, and ability to remain kind felt taxed beyond my limits, I opened the Bible to the Letter from James--not a letter I have read very often. My eyes fell immediately to this passage:
Consider yourself fortunate when all kinds of trials come your way, for you know that when your faith succeeds in facing such trials, the result is your ability to endure (James 1.2-3, Good News Bible).

I couldn't have needed to hear a message more, and I felt comforted by the thought that my challenges would lead to an expansion within. The passage also directed me to a place of gratitude. Consider yourself fortunate... How often do we feel fortunate when life isn't going our way? Maybe never. I began to pull myself out of my slump by summoning up some gratitude.

I also, on re-reading the passage noted that it is not ME who is overcoming my own woes and hardships, but my FAITH. It is my faith that succeeds in facing the hard times, rather than me as a person, a personality, a limited being who needs more sleep at night or more money or more time (whatever it may be). And faith is something that we grow, day by day, over time. Perhaps, like endurance, it comes as the gift of moving through the rough days with the willingness to--in each breath or with the newly risen sun--try again. Our faith is our ability to believe in the good, sometimes despite all evidence to the contrary, to believe in the God we may occasionally doubt, to believe in the Love we imagine we could run out of--but never do. And the reward, at the end of all this faithful believing, is that blessing of endurance out of which grows a greater spirit, and a stronger heart.