The Struggle

I like watching Netflix shows about creative processes, ideas, and works of art. The first one I watched was called "Chef's Table" and it was a masterful documentary series about the stories, restaurants, and recipes of some of the most world renowned chefs of our day. Their journeys were inspiring and full of "happenstances" and challenges as they pursued their dreams and succeeded in ways that many people never dream of. It's definitely worth your time and applies to what I'm writing about today. 

The show I'm currently "watching" is called "Grand Designs". I say "watching" in quotations because I rarely ever sit down during the day to indulge in one of the episodes, unless I'm feeling particularly exhausted like I was this morning. Anyways, this show is also a documentary series but instead of featuring famous chefs, it tells the story of particularly noteworthy homes, their owners, and the difficult process they go through to make their designs a reality. The homes are all modern works of architectural art and the narrator has a way of telling the story of their creation in a fascinatingly inspirational way. 

All that to say, today's episodes got me thinking. Particularly one line that one of the ladies said about the building process stuck out to me and I've been processing it all day since then. When asked what her biggest takeaway was from the 2 year building process was, through two record breaking winters, and major financial setbacks, she simply said, "I'm just still trying to figure out why? Why is it that a project like this has to be so difficult?" 

The narrator answered her question basically by saying that "it is what it is". Having told the stories of countless other homes and the painstaking process it took for every single one to come to fruition, he had gotten used to the fact that bringing a dream home into reality just straight up sucks sometimes... Things always go wrong, the budget inevitably takes a huge blow for one reason or another, and the project rarely ever finishes as quickly as the naive builders and future home owners think it will. The narrator was used to this same story line of "dream, incredibly stressful and trying struggle, and, finally, completion". 

But this woman wasn't. To her, she had just lived through this story line for the first time and it had left her reeling - wondering why the building process had felt more like a punch in the gut than the flowing, dreamy process she'd been hoping for. 

This got me thinking... why was this the story line that every dream home had to go through to be "birthed" into this world? And my answer is this:

Because this is the process that any authentic dream has to go through now that we are living after the Fall. The struggle we go through to bring the dreams of our hearts into reality is the "sweat of our brow" that God told Adam would come as a result of the curse on our world. Anythings truly beautiful and worthwhile is now nearly impossibly difficult to pursue and to finish simply because that is the cards we were dealt when we chose satan's way over God's... 

Just as Eve was cursed, through her own disobedience, with pain in childbearing, and Adam was cursed with thorns and hard work to bring literal fruit from the earth, so it is with everything we set our hearts to do. Our work and our dreams - especially the callings we have in Christ - are now wrought with challenges, dead ends, and agonizing struggles. 

But, as difficult as this reality is to swallow, in a way I think it's kind of beautiful and encouraging... Because as I begin to walk towards my own dreams and calling, I know that I will face my own road blocks and challenges. But knowing this sets my heart in a posture of complete dependence on my Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, because I realize that I will never be able to overcome the struggles ahead without them/Him (sorry that old Trinity things got me like..."which word should I use here?!?" lol). 

Knowing the story line I'm about to face up front - one of struggle and eventual glorious triumph - gives me a storehouse of hope that I can eat from in times of hopelessness and seeming dead ends. Because I know that, like the stories of countless people before me, it is often only after the greatest struggle that the most glorious victories will come. 

And so, I set out on the adventure of a lifetime, knowing that the struggle will be worth it in the end.