Embrace the Challenge

As one of my children stood pouting at me with squinting eyes and arms folded, indignently opposed to complying with my request, I had an epiphany!  The epiphany, the profound simple truth, is that we have a choice when we face challenges in our lives.  We can choose to fight what we face, or we can choose to embrace the challenge and just get started.

My child was seeing my request as a limitation, a road block, an obstacle to getting what he really wanted.  So, he was choosing to fight, to stiffen, to refuse.  I was baffled as I thought, this behavior will only keep him from what he wants!  He is wasting his time complaining, huffing, sulking....It is not getting him closer to what he wants.  If he would simply "embrace the challenge," accept the fact that he will not get what he wants until he has obeyed, then it would take only a few minutes to work through what I have asked.

How profoundly this applies to each of us personally... The question I have been asking myself is, What am I fighting in my life?  What seems to be standing in the way of what I want?  What is the obstacle bothering me or the road block?  Am I fighting who I am?  My circumstances?  What I look like?  What I've been asked to do?  Experiences that I detest that have happened to me? 

Embrace the challenge with me.  Be grateful for it.  Our challenges are perfectly designed for us.  They are exactly what will take us where we want to go.  The sooner we embrace where we are, what we are asked to do, and just begin to work through it...the sooner we will find ourselves where we want to be.  And, we will realize it was the perfect road to strengthen us and teach us what we needed to know.

Embrace the challenge.  Begin and the road will be opened to you.  Work through it.  You'll be where you want to be before you know it.  You are capable.  You are incredible.  You are loved!